
Rnnk ^ ^ 



REMARKS 



ON THE 



LIFE AND WRITINGS 



V 'V ^ 



OF 



DANIEL WEBSTER, 



OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



1 



CAREY & LEA— CHESTNUT STREET. 
1831. 






The following remarks are taken (with some addi- 
tions) from the eighteenth number of the American 
Quarterly Review. 



I i 



REMARKS, &c. 



It has often enough been objected to books written and pub- 
lished in the United States, that they want a national air, tone, 
and temper. Unhappily, too, the complaint has not unfrequently 
been well founded ; but the volume of Mr. Webster's Works is a 
striking exception to all such remarks. It consists of a collection 
of his Addresses, Speeches in Congress, and Forensic Arguments, 
printed chiefly from pamphlets, already well known ; and it is 
marked throughout, to an uncommon degree, with the best char- 
acteristics of a generous nationality. No one, indeed, can open 
it, without perceiving that, whatever it contains, must have been 
the work of one born and educated among our free institutions, — 
of one formed in their spirit, and animated and sustained by their 
genius and power. The subjects discussed, and the interests 
maintained in it, are entirely American ; and many of them are 
so important, that they are already become prominent parts of 
our history. As we turn over its pages, therefore, and see how 
completely Mr. Webster has identified himself with the great in- 
stitutions of the country, and how they, in their turn, have in- 
spired and called forth the greatest efforts of his uncommon mind, 
we feel as if the sources of his strength, and the mystery by which 
it controls us, were, in a considerable degree, interpreted. We 
feel that, like the fabulous giant of antiquity, he gathers his power 
from the very earth that produced him ; and our sympathy and 
interest, therefore, are excited, not less by the principle on which 
it so much depends, than by the subjects and occasions on whicli 
it is so strikingly put forth. We understand better than we did be- 
fore, not only why we have been drawn to him, but why the at- 
traction that carried us along, was at once so cogent and so natural. 
When, however, such a man appears before the nation, the pe- 
riod of his youth and training is necessarily gone by. It is only 
as a distinguished member of the General Government, — proba- 
bly in one of the two Houses of Congress, that he first comes, as 
it were, into the presence of the great mass of his countrymen. 
But, before he can arrive there, he has, in the vast majority of 
cases, reached the full stature of his strength, and developed all 
the prominent peculiarities of his character. Much, therefore, 
of what is most interesting in relation to him_, — much of what goes 
to make up his individuaUty and momentum, and without which, 
neither his elevation nor his conduct can be fully understood or 
estimated, is known only in the circle of his private friends, or, at 
most, in that section of the country from which he derives his 
origin. In this way, we are ignorant of a great deal it concerns 
us to know about many of our distinguished statesmen ; but about 
none, probably, are we more relatively ignorant than about Mr. 
Webster, who is eminently one of those persons, whose profes- 
sional and political career cannot be tolerably understood, unless 



(4) 
we have some acquaintance with the circumstances of his origin, 
and of his early history, taken in connexion with his whole public 
life We were, therefore, disappointed, on opening the volume 
of his works, not to find prefixed to it a full biographical notice 
of him. We were, indeed, so much disappointed and felt so fully 
persuaded, that neither the contents of the volume itself, nor the 
sources of its author's power, nor his position before the nation, 
could be properly comprehended without it, that we determined 
at once to prepare such notices of his life, as we might be able 
to collect under unfavorable circumstances. We only regret 
that our eflTorts have not been more successful, — and that our no- 
tices, therefore, are few and imperfect. 

Mr. Webster was born in Salisbury, a farming town of New- 
Hampsliire, at the head of the Merrimack, in 1782. His father, 
always a farmer, was a man of a strongly marked and vigorous 
character,— full of decision, integrity, firmness, and good sense. 
He served under Lord Amherst, in the French war, that ended 
in 1763 ; and, in the war of the Revolution, he commanded a com- 
pany chiefly composed of his own towns-people and friends, who 
gladly fought under his leading nearly every campaign, and at 
whose head he was found, in the battle of Bennington, at the 
White Plains, and at West-Point, when Arnold's treason was dis- 
covered. He died about the year 1806; and, at the time of his 
death, had filled, for many years, the ofllice of Judge of the Court 
of Common Pleas, for the state of New-Hampshire. 

But, during the early part of Mr. Webster's life, the place of his 
birth, now the centre of a flourishing and happy population, was on 
the frontiers of civilization. His father had been one of the very 
first settlers, and had even pushed further into the wilderness than 
the rest ; so that the smoke sent up amidst the solitude of the forest, 
from the humble dwelling in which Mr. Webster was himself 
born, marked, for some time, the uUimate limit of New-England 
adventure at the North. Undoubtedly, in any other country, the 
sufferings, privations, and discouragements inevitable in such a 
life, would have precluded all thought of intellectual culture. 
But, in New-England, ever since the first free-school was estab- 
lished amidst the woods that covered the peninsula of Boston, in 
1036, the school-master has been found on the border line between 
savage and civilized life, often indeed with an ax to open his 
own path, but always looked up to with respect, and always car- 
rying with him a valuable and preponderating influence. 

It is to this characteristic trait of New-England policy, that we 
owe the lirst development of Mr. Webster's powers, and the 
original determination of his whole course in life ; for, unless the 
school had sought him in the forest, his father's means would not 
have been suflicient to send him down into the settlements to seek 
the school. The first upward step, therefore, would have been 
wanting ; and it is not at all probable, that any subsequent exer- 
tions on his own part, would have enabled him to retrieve it. 
The value of such a benefit cannot, indeed, be measured ; but it 



(M 

seems to have been his good fortune to be able in part, at least, 
to repay it ; for no man has explained with such simpUcity and 
force as he has explained them, the very principles and founda- 
tions on which the free-schools of New-England rest, or shown, 
with such a feeling of their importance and value, how truly the 
free institutions of our country must be built on the education of 
all. We allude now to his remarks in the Convention of Massa- 
chusetts, where, speaking of the support of schools, he says : — 

" In this particular we may be allowed to claim a merit of a very high and peculiar 
character. This commonwealth, with other of the New-England states, early adopted, 
and has constantly maintained the principle, that it is the undoubted right, and the 
bounden duty of government, to provide for the instruction of all youth. That which 
is elsewhere left to chance, or to charity, we secure by law. For the purpose of pub- 
lic instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation, in proportion to his property, 
and we look not to the question, whether he, himself, have or have not children to be 
benefited by the education for which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal 
system of policy, by which property, and life, and the peace of society are secured. 
We seek to prevent, in some measure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a 
salutary and conservative principle' of virtue, and of knowledge, in an early age. Wo 
hope to excite a feeling of respectability, and of sense of character, by enlarging the 
capacity, and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruc- 
tion, we seek, as far as possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere ; to keep good 
sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well 
as the censures of the law, and the denunciations of religion, against immorahty and 
crime. We hope for a security, beyond the law, and above the law, ia the preva- 
lence of enhghtened and well principled moral sentiment. We hope to continue and 
to prolong the time, when, in the villages and farm-houses of New-England, there 
may be undisturbed sleep, within unbarred doors. And knowing that our governmer>t 
rests directly on the public will, that we may preserve it, we endeavor to give a safe 
and proper direction to the public will. We do not, indeed, expect all men to be 
philosophers, or statesmen ; but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the du- 
ration of our system of government rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of gen- 
eral knowledge, and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, 
as well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow but sure undermining 
of licentiousness." pages 209, 210. 

" I rejoice. Sir, that every man in this community may call all property his own, 
so far as he has occasion for it, to furnish for himself and his children the blessings 
of religious instruction and the elements of knowledge. This celestial, and this 
earthly light, he is entitled to by the fundamental laws. It is every poor tnan's im- 
doubted birth-right, it is the great blessing which this constitution has secured to 
him, it is his solace in life, and it may well be his consolation in death, that his coun- 
try stands pledged, by the faith which it has plighted to all its citizens, to protect his 
children from ignorance, barbarism, and vice." p. 211. 

How Mr. Webster's education was advanced immediately after 
he left these primary schools, is, we believe, not known. It was, 
however, with great sacrifices on the part of his family, and 
severe struggles on his own. At last, when he was fifteen or 
sixteen years old, after a very imperfect preparation, he was 
entered at Dartmouth College ; at least, so we infer, for he was 
graduated there in 1801. What were his principal or favorite 
pursuits during the three or four years of his academic life, we 
do not know. We remember, however, to have met formerly 
one of his classmates, who spoke with the liveliest interest of the 
generous and delightful spirit he showed among his earliest friends 
and competitors, in the midst of whom, he manifested, from the 
first, aspirations entirely beyond his condition, and, when the first 
year was passed, developed faculties which left all rivalship far 



(6) 

behind lum. Indeed, it is known, in many ways, that, by those 
who were acquainted with him at this period of his life, he was 
already regarded as a marked man ; and that, to the more saga- 
cious of them, the honors of his subsequent career have not been 
unexpccled. 

Immediately after leaving college, he began the study of the 
law in the place of his nativity, with Mr. Thompson, soon after- 
wards a member of Congress ; a gentleman who, from the eleva- 
tion of his own character, was able to comprehend that of his 
pupil, and contribute to unfold its powers. But the res angustca 
do?ni pressed hard upon him. He was compelled to exert himself 
for his own support; and his professional studies were frequently 
interrupted and impaired by pursuits, which ended only in obtain- 
ing what was needful for his mere subsistence. 

Circumstances connected with his condition and wants at this 
time, led him to Boston, and carried him, when there, into the 
office of Mr. Goi-e. This was, undoubtedly, one of the deciding 
circumstances of his life. Mr. Gore was a lawyer of eminence, 
and a gentleman, in the loftiest and most generous meaning of the 
word. His history was already connected with that of the country. 
He had been appointed district attorney of the United States for 
Massachusetts, by Washington ; he had served in England as our 
commissioner under Jay's treaty; and he was afterwards governor 
of his native state, and its senator in Congress. His whole char- 
acter, private, political, and professional, from its elevation, pu- 
rity, and dignity, was singularly fitted to influence a young man 
of quick and generous feelings, who already perceived within him- 
self the impulse of talents and the stirrings of an ambition whose 
direction was yet to be determined. Mr. Webster felt, that it 
was well for him to be there ; and Mr. Gore obtained an influence 
over his young mind, which the peculiarly kind and frank manners 
of the instructor permitted early to ripen into an intimacy and 
friendship that were interrupted only by death. 

Mr. Webster finished the study of his profession in Boston, and 
was there admitted to the bar in 1805; — Mr. Gore, who present- 
ed him, venturing, at the time, to make a prediction to the court 
respecting his pupil's future eminence, which has been hardly 
more tlian fulfilled by all his present fame. At first, he began the 
practice of his profession in Boscawen, a small village adjacent 
to the place of his birth ; but in 1807, he removed to Portsmouth, 
where, no doubt, he thought he was establishing himself for fife. 

As a young lawyer, al)0Ut to lay the foundations for future suc- 
cess, his position could, j)crhaps, hardly have been rendered more 
fortunate and happy than it was now in Portsmouth. He rose 
rapiflly in general regard, and was, therefore, almost at once, 
ranked with the first in his profession in his native state. Of course, 
his associations and intercourse were with the first minds. And, 
happily for one like him, the presiding judge of the highest tribu- 
nal in New-Hampshire was then Mr. Smith, afterwards governor 
of the state, whose native clearness of perception, acuteness, and 



power, united to faithful and accurate learning in his profession, 
and the soundest and most practical wisdom in the fulfilment of 
his duties on the bench, and in his intercourse with the bar, gave 
him naturally and necessarily great influence over its younger 
members. Mr. Webster, as the most prominent among them, 
came much in contact with him, and profited much from his sa- 
gacious foresight and wise and discriminating kindness. He came, 
too, still more in contact with Mr. Mason, afterwards a senator 
in Congress, and then and still the leading counsel in New-Hamp- 
shire. Mr. Mason was his senior by several years, but there was 
no other adversary capable of encountering him : and the intel- 
lect with which Mr. Webster was thus called to contend on equal 
terms was one of the highest order, of ample resources, and of 
the quickest penetration; whose original reach, firm grasp, and 
unsparing logic, left no safety to an adversary, but in a vigor, 
readiness, and skill, which could never be taken unprepared or at 
disadvantage. It was a severe school; but there is httle reason 
to doubt, Mr. Webster owes to its stern and rigid discipline much 
of that intellectual training and power, which render him, in his 
turn, so formidable an adversary. He owes to it, also, notwith- 
standing their uniform and daily opposition in court, the no less 
uniform personal friendship of Mr. Mason in private life. 

It was in the midst, however, of this period, both of discipline 
and success as a lavryer, in New-Hampshire, that he entered pub- 
lic life. In the government of his native state, we believe, he 
never took office of any kind ; and his first political place, there- 
fore, was in the thirteenth Congress of the United Stales. He 
was chosen in 1812, soon after the declaration of war ; and as he 
was then but thirty years old, he must have been one of the 
youngest members of that important Congress. His position 
there was difficult, and he felt it to be so. He was opposed to 
the policy of the war; he represented a state earnestly opposed 
to it ; and he had always, especially in the eloquent and powerful 
memorial from the great popular meeting in Rockingham, ex- 
pressed himself fully and frankly on the whole subject. But he 
was now called into the councils of the government, which was 
carrying on the war itself He felt it to be his duty, therefore, 
to make no factious opposition to the measures essential to main- 
tain the dignity and honor of the country ; to make no opposi- 
tion for opposition's sake ; though, at the same time, he felt it to 
be no less his duty, to take good heed that neither the constitu- 
tion, nor the essential interests of the nation, were endangered 
or sacrificed — ne quid detrimenti respuhlica accipiat. This, in- 
deed, seems to have been his motto up to the time of the peace; 
and his tone in relation to it is always manly, bold, and decisive. 
When Mr. Monroe's bill for a sort of conscription was intro- 
duced, he joined with Mr. Eppes, and other friends of the admin- 
istration, in defeating a project, which, except in a moment of 
great anxiety and excitement, would probably have found no de- 
fenders. But when, on the other hand, the bill for " encouraging 



(8) 

enlistments" was before the house, he held, in January 1814, the 
following strong and striking language, in which, now the passions 
of that stormy period are hushed, all will sympathize. 

" The humble aid which it would be in my power to render to measures of gor 
vcrnmcnt, shall be given cheerfully, if government will pursue measures which I can 
conscientiously support. If, even now, failing in an honest and sincere attempt to 
procure a just and lionourable peace, it will return to measures of defence and pro- 
tection, such as reason, and common sense, and the public opinion, all call for, my 
vote shall not be withholdcn from tiic means. Give up your futile projects of inva- 
sion. Extinguish tlie fires that blaze on your inland frontiers. Establish perfect 
safety and defence there by aderiuatc force. Let every man that sleeps on your soil 
sleep in security. Stop the blood that flows from the veins of unarmed yeomanry, 
and women and children. Give to the living time to bury and lament their dead, in 
the quietness of private sorrow. Having performed this work of beneficence and 
mercy on your inland border, turn, and look with the eye of justice and compassion, 
on your vast population along tiic coast. Unclench the iron grasp of your embargo. 
Take measures for that end before another sun sets upon you. With all the war of 
the enemy on your connnerce, if you would cease to make war upon it yourselves, 
you would still have some commerce. That commerce would give you some reve- 
nue. Apply that revenue to the augmentation of your navy. That navy, in turnv, 
will protect your commerce. Let it no longer be said, that not one ship of force, built 
by your hands since tlie war, yet floats upon the ocean. Turn the current of your 
etforts into the channel, which national sentiment has already worn broad and deep 
to receive it. A naval force, competent to defend your coast against considerable 
armaments, to convoy your trade, and perhaps raise the blockade of your rivers, is 
not a chimera. It may be realized. If, tlien, the war must continue, go to the ocean. 
If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to tlie theatre, where alone 
tliose rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your fortunes points you. 
There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you. Even our 
party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water's edge. They are lost in 
attachment to the national character, on the element where that character is made 
respectable. In protecting naval interests by naval means, you will arm yourselves 
with the whole power of national sentiment, and may command the whole abundance 
of the national resource. In time, you may be enabled to redress injuries in the place 
where they may be offered ; and, if need be, to accompany your own flag throughout 
the world with the protection of your own cannon."* Speech, pp. 14, 15. 

Later in the same Congress, the subject of the establishment 
and principles of a national bank came into discussion, and the 
finances of the country being then greatly embarrassed, this sub- 
ject rose to paramount importance, and absorbed much of the at- 
tention of Congress up to the moment when the annunciation of 
l)eace put a period, for the time, to all such debates. On the whole 



* These arc the last words of the speech ; and tlie sentiment they contain in fa- 
vor of a navy and naval protection, has been maintained with great earnestness by 
Mr. Webster for nearly thirty years, on all public occasions. In an oration delivered 
July 4th, 180G, and printed at Concord, N. H., he says, " an immense portion of our 
property is on the waves. Sixty or eighty thousand of our most useful citizens are 
there, and arc entitled to such protection from the government as their case requires." 
In another oration, delivered in 1812, and printed at Portsmouth, he says, " a navy 
sufficient for the defence of our coasts and harbors, for the convoy of important 
branches of our trade, and sufficient, also, to give our enemies to understand, when 
they injure us, that they too arc vulnerable, and tliat wc have the power of retaliation 
as well as of defence, seems to be the plain, necessary, indispensable policy of the 
nation. It is the dictate of nature and common sense, that means of defence shall 
liave relation to the danger." These doctrines in favor of a navy were extremely 
unwelcome to the nation when they were delivered ; the first occasion referred to, be- 
ing just before the imposition of the embargo ; and the second, just before the capture 
of the Guerriere. How stands the national sentiment now ? Who doubts the truth of 
what Mr. Webster could not utter in 1806 and 1812 without exciting ill-wiU to him- 
self? ^ 



(9) 
matter of the bank and the currency, Congress was divided into 
three parties. First, those who were against a national bank un- 
der any form. These persons consisted chiefly of the remains of 
the old party, which had originally opposed the establishment of 
the first bank in Washington's time, in 1791, and in 1811 had pre- 
vented the renewal of its charter. They were, however, gene- 
rally, friends of the existing administration, whose position now 
called strongly for the creation of a new bank : and, therefore, 
while they usually voted on preliminary and incidental measures 
with the favorers of a bank, they voted, on the final passage of 
the bill, against it ; so that it was much easier to defeat the whole 
of any one project, than to carry through any modification of it. 
Second, there was a party consisting almost entirely of friends of 
the administration, who wished for a bank, provided it were such 
a one as they thought would not only regulate the currency of the 
country, and facilitate the operations of the government, but also 
afford present and important aid by heavy loans, which the bank 
was to be compelled to make, and to enable it to do which, it was 
to be relieved from the necessity of paying its notes in specie ; — 
in other words, it was a party that wished to authorize and es- 
tablish a paper currency for the whole country. The third party 
wished for a bank with a moderate capital, compelled always to 
redeem its notes with specie, and at liberty to judge for itself, 
when it would, and when it would not, make loans to the govern- 
ment. 

The second party, of course, was the one that introduced into 
Congress the project for a bank at this time. The bill was origi- 
nally presented to the Senate ; and its main features were, that the 
bank should absorb a large amount of the depreciated public debt 
of the United States, and grant to the government heavy loans 
on the security of a similar debt to be created ; that its capital 
should consist of fifty millions of dollars, of which five millions 
only were to be specie, and the rest depreciated government se- 
curities ; and that the bank, when required, should lend the govern- 
ment thirty millions. At the time when this plan was brought for- 
ward, all the numerous state banks south of New-England had re- 
fused to redeem their notes, or, as it was called " to ears polite," 
had "suspended specie payments," in consequence of which, their 
notes had fallen in value from 10 to 25 per cent., and specie, of 
course, had risen proportionally in value, and disappeared from 
circulation entirely. To afford the contemplated national bank any 
chance for carrying on its operations, or even for beginning them, 
it was to be authorized " to suspend specie payments," which 
meant, that it was to be authorized never to begin them ; for, with- 
out this authority, their specie would be drained the moment their 
notes should be issued equal to its amount. On the other hand, all 
the taxes and revenues of the government were to be receivable 
in the paper of the ba nk, however much it might fall in value. In 
short, the whole scheme was one of those vast Serbonian bogs, 
where, from the days of Law's Mississippi Company, armies 

B 



( 10) 

whole of le£fislators and projectors have sunk, without leaving even 
a monument behind them to warn their followers of their fate. 

We must not, however, be extravagantly astonished, that a pro- 
ject which we now know was in its nature so wild and dangerous, 
should have found favorers and advocates. The finances of the 
country were then in a critical, and even distressing position ; and 
all men were anxious to devise some means to relieve them. A 
large part of the nation, too, sincerely entertained the chimerical 
notion, now universally exploded, that it was practicable to estab- 
lish and maintain a safe and stable paper currency, even when 
not convertible into specie at the pleasure of the holder ; and the 
example of England and its national bank was referred to with 
etlect, though, from its history since, the same example could now 
be referred to with double effect on the other side of the discussion. 
After an earnest and able debate, then, the bill, on the whole, passed 
the Senate, and it was understood that a considerable majority of 
the House of Representatives was in its favor. 

When brought there on the 9th of December, 1814, it excited 
a very animated discussion, which, with various interruptions from 
the forms and rules of the House, references to committees, and 
occasional adjournments, was continued till the 2d of January. 
In this protracted debate Mr. Webster took a conspicuous part ; 
and his efforts, of which the speech now published is but an incon- 
siderable item, did much to avert the threatened evil, and to esta- 
blish his reputation, not merely as an eloquent and powerful deba- 
ter, which had already been settled in the previous session, but as 
a sagacious and sound statesman. 

His principal opposition to the bill was made on the last day of 
its discussion. He then introduced a series of resolutions, bring- 
ing the bank proposed within the limits of the specie-paying prin- 
ciple, and taking off" from it the restraints, which placed it too 
much within the power of the government to make it useful as a 
moneyed institution, either to the finances or to the commerce of 
the country. The objections to the plan then before Congress, and 
the disasters that would probably follow its adoption, he portrayed 
in the following strong language, which none, however, will now 
think to have been too strons. 



'»• 



" The capital of the bank, then, will be five millions of specie, and forty-five mil- 
lions of government stocks. In other words, the bank will possess five millions of 
dollars, and the government will owe it forty-five millions. This debt from govern- 
ment, the bank is restrained from selling during the war, and government is excused 
from paying until it shall see fit. The bank is also to be under obligation to loan go- 
vernment thirty millions of dollars on demand, to be repaid, not when the convenience 
or necessity of the bank may require, but when debts due to the bank, from govern- 
ment, are paid ; that is, when it shall be the good pleasure of government. This sum 
of tliirly millions is to supply the necessities of government, and to supersede the oc- 
casion of other loans. This loan will doubtless be made on the first day of the ex- 
istence of tlie bank, because the public wants can admit of no delay. Its condition, 
then, will be, that it has five millions of specie, if it has been able to obtain so much, 
and a debt of scvcnty-fivc millions, no part of which it can either sell or call in> due 
to it from govcrmnont. 

" The loan of thirty millions to government, can only be made by an imnM;diate 
issue of bills to that amount. If tlicsc bills should return, the bank will not be able 



( 11 ) 

to pay them. This is certain, and to remedy this inconvenience, power is given to 
the directors, by the act, to suspend, at their own discretion, the payment of their 
notes, until the President of the United States shall otherwise order. The President 
will give no such order, because the necessities of government will compel it to draw 
on the bank till the bank becomes as necessitous as itself. Indeed, whatever orders 
may be given or withheld, it will be utterly impossible for the bank to pay its notes. 
No such thing is expected from it. The first note it issues will be dishonored on its 
return, and yet it will continue to pour out its paper, so long as government can apply 
it in any degree to its purposes. 

" What sort of an institution, sir, is this ? It looks less like a bank than a depart- 
ment of government. It will be properly the paper-money department. Its capital 
is government debts ; the amount of its issues will depend on government necessities ; 
government, in eflfect, absolves itself from its own debts to the bank, and by way of 
compensation absolves the bank from its own contracts with others. This is, indeed, 
a wonderful scheme of finance. The government is to grow rich, because it is to 
borrow without the obligation of repaying, and is to borrow of a bank which issues 
paper without liabihty to redeem it. If this bank, like other institutions which dull 
and plodding common sense has erected, were to pay its debts, it must have some 
limits to its issues of paper, and therefore there would be a point beyond which it 
could not make loans to government. This would fall short of the wishes of the con- 
trivers of this system. They provide for an unlimited issue of paper, in an entire ex- 
emption from payment. They found their bank, in the first place, on the discredit 
of government, and then hope to enrich government out of the insolvency of their 
bank. With them, poverty itself is the main suuice of supply, and bankruptcy a 
mine of inexhanstihle treasure." pp. 224—5. 

The resolutions proposed by Mr. Webster, and supported in 
this speech, were not passed. Probably he did not expect them 
to pass, when he proposed them ; but the same day, the main 
question was taken upon the passage of the bill itself; and, as it 
was rejected by the casting vote of the speaker, there can be no 
reasonable doubt, that without his exertions this portentous ab- 
surdity would not have been defeated. It is but justice, however, 
to the supporters of the measure, to say, that the mischievous 
consequences of its adoption, were by no means so apparent then 
as they are now. We have since had no little experience on the 
whole matter. It required all the power and influence of the 
general government, and of the present sound and specie-paying 
Bank of the United States, acting vigorously in concert for seve- 
ral years after the war, to relieve the country from the flood of 
depreciated notes of the state banks with which it was inundated, 
and to restore a safe and uniform currency. When or how this evil 
could have been remedied, if, at the very close of the war, it had 
been almost indefinitely increased by the establishment of a vast 
machine, issuing every day as much irredeemable paper as would 
be taken at any and every discount, and thus co-operating with 
the evil itself, instead of opposing it, is more than any man will 
now be bold enough to conjecture. We should, no doubt, have 
been in bondage to it to this hour, and probably left it as a yoke 
upon the necks of our children. 

But, at the time referred to, the necessities of the government 
were urgent ; and, on motion of Mr. Webster, the rule that pre- 
vented a reconsideration at the same session of a subject thus 
disposed of, was suspended the very next day, and a bill for a 
bank was, on the same day, January 3, recommitted to a select 
committee. On the 6th, the committee reported a specie-paying 
bank, with a much diminished capital, which was carried in the 



( 12) 

house, with the fewest possible forms, on the 7th ; Mr. Webster 
and most of his friends voting for it. It passed the senate, too, 
though with some difficulty ; but was refused by the President, on 
the ground, that it was not sufficient to meet the exigencies of 
the case, which, indeed, we now know, no bank would have been 
able to meet. This project, however, being thus rejected, another 
was immediately introduced into the senate, the basis of which 
was to be laid, like that of the first bank proposed, in a paper 
currency. It passed that body ; but on being brought into the 
house met a severe and determined opposition, which ceased only 
when, on the 17th, the news of peace being received, the bill was 
indefinitely postponed. 

Mr. Webster's exertions, however, on the subject of the cur- 
rency, did not cease with the overthrow of the paper bank sys- 
tem. He was re-elected by New-Hampshire for the fourteenth 
Congress, and sat there during the sessions of 1815-16; and 
1816-17. The whole state of things in the nation was now 
changed. The war was over, and the great purpose of sound 
statesmanship was therefore to bring the healing and renovating 
influences of peace into the administration and finances of the 
country. On the introduction of the bill to incorporate the present 
Bank of the United States, Mr. Webster opposed its passage. The 
grounds on which he opposed it were mainly two. He thought 
the proposed capital, which, in the original bill, was fifty millions, 
was unwisely and unnecessarily large ; and he thought the power 
given to the President to authorize a suspension of specie pay- 
ments would prove ruinous. On both these points, his opposition, 
with that of his friends, was successful ; the proposed amount of 
capital was reduced to thirty-five millions; and the power to 
authorize a suspension of specie payments was stricken out. It 
seems, also, to have been his opinion, that the government should 
have nothing to do with the appointment of Directors ;— perhaps, 
because it had nothing to do with their appointment in the bank 
of 1791. As, however, the government itself was to be a large 
subscriber to the present institution, we confess, it seems to us 
but reasonable, that it should have its proper voice in the annual 
constitution of the Board of Directors. Perhaps Mr. Webster was 
opposed to the subscription to the stock on the part of the Govern- 
ment ; and that this, together with the appointment of Govern- 
ment-Directors, and a hope of other useful changes in the charter, 
influenced his final vote, which was against the passage of the 
bill, though he had previously voted for one bank, and had steadily 
maintained the utility of a well established institution of that kind. 
His great object, however, through the whole, seems to have been 
to convince Congress and the country, that a paper bank would 
be ruinous ; that a bank, with an inordinate amount of capital, 
such as fifty millions, would be dangerous; that a bank, with 
power to suspend specie payments, would bring the country to 
bankruptcy and ruin ; and that all hope of restoring the currency 
of the country, even by means of the best conducted bank, would 



( 13) 

be futile, unless the Government itself would execute the existing 
laws, and receive payment of its debts only in legal coin, or in the 
paper of specie-paying banks. In a speech, not printed in this 
volume, made on the 28th February, 181G, we find the following 
sound and cogent remarks, which we should have been glad to 
see republished with the rest of Mr. Webster's discussions on 
these subjects ; for they are full of a wisdom which is always 
profitable. 

" It was a mistaken idea," he said, " which he had heard uttered on this subject, 
that wc were about to reform the national currency. No nation liad a better cur- 
rency than the United States — there was no nation which had guarded its currency 
with more care ; for the framers of the constitution, and those who enacted the early 
statutes on this subject were hard-money men ; tliey had felt, and therefore duly ap- 
preciated the evils of a paper medium ; they therefore sedulously guarded the cur- 
rency of the United States from debasement. The legal currency of the United 
States was gold and silver coin ; this was a subject in regard to which Congress had 
run into no folly. What then was the present evil ? Having a perfectly sound na- 
tional currency, and the government having no power in fact to make any thing else 
current but gold and silver, there had grown up in different states a currency of paper 
issued by banks, setting out with the promise to pay gold and silver, which they liad 
been wholly unable to redeem ; the consequence was, that there was a mass of paper 
afloat, of perhaps fifty millions, which sustained no immediate relation to the legal 
currency of the country — a paper which wiU not enable any man to pay money he 
owes to his neighbor, or his debts to the government. — The banks had issued more 
money than they could redeem, and the evil was severely felt. He declined occupy- 
ing the time of the house to prove that there was a depreciation of the paper in circu- 
lation ; the legal standard of value was gold and silver ; the relation of paper to it proved 
its state, and the rate of its depreciation. Gold and silver currency was the law of 
the land at home, and the law of the world abroad ; there could, in the present state 
of the world, be no other currency. In consequence of tlie immense paper issues 
having banished specie from circulation, the government had been obliged, in direct 
violation of existing statutes, to receive the amount of their taxes in something which 
was not recognized by law as the money of the country, and which was, in fact, 
greatly depreciated. This was the evil. 

" As to the conduct of tlie banks, he would not examine whether the great advances 
they had made to the government during the war, were right or wrong in them, or 
whether it was right or wrong in the government to accept them ; but since the peace, 
their conduct had been wholly unjustifiable, as also had that of the Treasury in relation 
to them. It had been supposed the banks would have immediately sold out the stocks, 
with whicli they had no business, and have fulfilled their engagements ; but public ex- 
pectation had in this respect been disappointed. When this happened, the government 
ought, by the use of means in its power, to have compelled the banks to return to their 
specie payments. Any remedy now to be applied to tliis evil, must be applied to the 
depreciated mass of paper itself"; it must be some measure which would give heat and 
life to this mortified mass of the body politic. Tlie evil was not to be remedied by in- 
troducing a new paper circulation ; there could be no such thing, he showed by a 
variety of illustration, as two media in circulation, the one credited, and the other dis- 
credited. All bank paper derives its credit solely from its relation to gold and silver ; 
and there was no remedy for the state of depreciation of the paper currency but the 
resumptions of specie payments. If all the property of the United States was pledged 
for the redemption of these fifty millions of paper, it would not thereby be brought up 
to par; or, if it did, that would happen which had never yet happened in any other 
country. An issue of Treasury -notes would have no better effect than the establisli- 
ment of a new bank paper. He illustrated this general position by referring to a 
period anterior to the time of the reformation of the coin of England, Vi'hen the exist- 
ing coin had been much debased by clipping, &c. which had created much alarm ; an 
attempt had been made to correct the currency thus vitiated, by throwing a quantity 
of sound coin into circulation with the debased ; the result was, that the sound coin 
disappeared, was hoarded up, because more valuable than that of the same nominal 
value which was in general circulation." 

" In regard to the plan of this proposed bank, he would consent to no bank which 



( 14) 

to all intents and purposes was not a specie bank ; and in that view he was in favor of 
the proposed amendment. He expressed some alarm at the stock feature of the bank ; 
which would enable and might induce the existing bank corporations to come forward 
and take up the whole stock of the National Bank. He should be glad to see a bank 
established, he observed, in the course of his remarks on this point, which would com- 
mand the solid capital of the country. There were men of wealth and standing who 
would embark their funds in a bank constituted on commercial specie principles, but 
who would not associate in such an institution with the stockholders in the country, 
any more than a good currency would associate with a bad one. A National Bank 
ought to be regarded, not as the power to rectify the present state of tlie currency, 
but as a means to aid the government in the exercise of its power in this respect. The 
power of the government must be exercised in some way, and that speedily, or evils 
would result the extent of which he would not attempt to describe." ^ - 

The suggestions which Mr. Webster made in this same speech, 
predicting enormous subscriptions to the proposed institution for 
purposes of speculation merely, and out of all proportion to the 
real ability of the subscribers, showed the sound statesmanlike fore- 
cast which has marked him through his whole political course, 
and were fully justified by the difficulties that occurred in conse- 
quence of them, in the early history of the bank. The bill, how- 
ever, having passed, and having received the President's signa- 
ture on the 10th April, Mr. Webster, who saw, indeed, at once, 
that it placed the bank substantially on the principles maintained 
in his resolutions of the preceding year, which defeated the project 
of a paper bank, saw no less quickly and clearly, that the peace 
had produced an important change in the influence of the paper cur- 
rency of the country, and that no National Bank, however wisely 
managed, would alone be able to meet the increased and increasing 
evils of the case, or have power enough to restore unaided a 
sound and safe circulating medium. The small depreciated notes 
of the state banks south of New-England, he saw, still filled the 
land with their lothed intrusion ; and, what was worse, the rev- 
enue of the general government, receivable at the diflTerent cus- 
tom-houses, was collected in this degraded paper, to the great 
injury of the finances of the country, and to the still greater injury 
of the property of private individuals, who, in different states, 
paid, of course, different rates of duties to the treasury, according 
to the value of the paper medium in which it happened to be re- 
ceived. Mr. Webster foresaw the mischiefs that must follow 
from this state of things, if a remedy were not speedily applied. 
He, therefore, in the same month of April, 181G, introduced a 
resolution, the effect of which was, to require the revenue of the 
United States to be collected and received only in the legal cur- 
rency of the United States, or in bills equal to that currency in 
value. 

In stating the nature of the evil, after showing by what means 
the paper of the state banks south of New-England had become 
depreciated ; he says, — 

" What still farther increases the evil is, that this bank paper being the issue of 
very many institutions, situated in different parts of the country, and possessing dif- 
ferent degrees of credit, the depreciation ha.s not been, and is not now, uniform 
throughout the United States. It is not the same at Baltimore as at Philadelphia, 
nor the some at Philadelphia as at New- York. In New-England, the banks have 



(15) 

not stopped payment in specie, and of course their paper has not been depressed al 
all. But the notes of banks which have ceased to pay specie, have nevertheless 
been, and still are, received for duties and taxes in the places where such banks 
exist. The consequence of all this is, that the people of the United States pay their 
duties and taxes in currencies of different values, in different places. In other 
words, taxes and duties are higher in some places than they are in others, by as 
much as the value of gold and silver is greater than the value of the several descrip- 
tions of bank paper which are received by government. This difference in relation 
to tiie paper of the District where we now are, is twenty-five per cent. Taxes and 
duties, therefore, collected in Massachusetts, are one quarter higher than the taxes 
and duties which are collected, by virtue of the same laws, in the District of Colum- 
bia." pp. 233-4. 

A little further on, after showing that if this state of things is 
not changed by the government, it will be likely to change the 
government itself, he adds, — 

" It is our business to foresee this danger, and to avoid it. There are some po- 
litical evils which are seen as soon as they are dangerous, and which alarm at once 
as well the people as the government. Wars and invasions therefore are not always 
the most certain destroyers of national prosperity. They come in no questionable 
shape. They announce their own approach, and the general security is preserved by 
the general alarm. Not so with the evils of a debased coin, a depreciated paper cur- 
rency, or a depressed and falling public credit. Not so with the plausible and insid- 
ious mischiefs oLs. paper-money system. These insinuate themselves in the shape 
of facilities, accommodation, and relief. They hold out the most fallacious hope of 
an easy payment of debts, and a lighter burden of taxation. It is easy for a portion 
of the people to imagine that government may properly continue to receive depre- 
ciated paper, because they have received it, and because it is more convenient to 
obtain it than to obtain other paper, or specie. But on these subjects it is, that gov- 
ernment ought to exercise its own peculiar wisdom and caution. It is supposed to 
possess, on subjects of this nature, somewhat more of fores'g'it than has fallen to the 
lot of individuals. It is bound to fai-oeoo tlio evil before every man feels it, and to 
take all necessary measures to guard against it, altliough they may be measures 
attended with some difficulty and not without temporary inconvenience. In my hum- 
ble judgment, the evil demands the immediate attention of Congress. It is not cer- 
tain, and in my opinion not probable that it will ever cure itself. It is more likely 
to grow by indulgence, while the remedy which must in the end be applied, will be- 
come less efficacious by delay. 

" The only power which the general government possesses of restraininj^ the issues 
of the state banks, is to refuse their notes in the receipts of the treasury. This power 
it can exercise now, or at least it can provide now for exercising in reasonable time, 
because the currency of some part of the country is yet sound, and the evil is not 
universal. If it should become universal, who, that hesitates now, will then propose 
any adequate means of rehef ? If a measure, like the bill of yesterday, or the reso- 
lution of to-day, can hardly pass here now, what hope is there that any efficient mea- 
sures will be adopted hereafter ?" pp. 235-6. 

The doctrine of this speech is as important as it is true. A 
sound and uniform currency is essential, not only for the con- 
venient and safe management of the fiscal concerns of a govern- 
ment ; but, no less so, for the security of private property. It 
is, indeed, at once the standard and basis of all transfer and ex- 
change ; and, whenever the circulating medium has become much 
deranged in any country, it has been found an arduous, and 
sometimes a dangerous task, to restore it to a sound state. The 
effort almost necessarily brings on a conflict between the two 
great classes of debtor and creditor, into which every commu- 
nity is divided, — the creditor claiming the highest standard of 
value in the currency, and the debtor the lowest ; and the results 
of such a conflict have not unfrequently been found in changes, 
convulsions, and political revolution. From such a conflict we 



( 16) 

were saved in this country, by the defeat of the paper-currency 
bank proposed in 1814, — by the establishment of the present 
specie-paying bank, and by the adoption of Mr, Webster's reso- 
lution, which was appro^■ed by the President on the 30th of 
April, 1816. 

And yet, notwithstanding all this ; — notwithstanding the long 
discussion about the first bank, whose charter was so deliberately 
approved and signed by Washington in 1791 ; notwithstanding the 
able and thorough discussion of 1815 and 1816, which resulted in 
the establishment of the present bank, — the child not so much of 
the policy as of the absolute necessities of the State ; notwith- 
standing too, that both banks have amply fulfilled the purposes of 
their establishment while the last has restored and still continues 
to us the sound currency, which we had lost by a refusal to re- 
charter the first ; — notwithstanding all this, there are persons., 
who, even now, stand ready to reject the whole experience of 
the past, to give up a National Bank, and throw us back again 
into the disasters and conflicts of a fluctuating and degraded 
paper currency. Some of these persons have, or seem to have, 
metaphysical scruples about the constitutionality of such an in- 
stitution. But, if the constitutionality of the Bank of the United 
States is not settled, what is? It has been admitted and acted 
upon by every administration which has been at the head of our 
affairs ; it hat? been twice elaborately discussed and decided by 
Congress, and received ihcir ounotion ; and it has been repeatedly 
drawn into controversy in the courts of law, and as repeatedly 
recognized on appeal by the highest tribunals of the countr}\ Iw 
short, the three co-ordinate branches of our government, com- 
prising, of course, the whole of its powers and sanctions, have 
uniformly, for the space of forty years, either silently sustained 
or directly asserted the constitutionality of the Bank of the 
United States. Is it, then, too much to say, that there is not a 
citizen of our union, who holds a foot of land or a dollar of prop- 
erty, by a safer tenure and right, than the Bank of the United 
States holds its chartered privileges?* 

But, others, who admit fully its constitutionality, deny that is a 
useful or valuable institution. How, then, stands this view of the 
case? Every secretary of the treasury has maintained, not 
merely its usefulness, but its absolute necessity to the government ; 
and the two wisest and ablest of them, Hamilton and Gallatin, 
who agreed in f)olitical opinion about little else, are found united 
on this cardinal point; and no small portion of their respective 
reputations now rests on the distinguished ability with which they 
have defended it. Besides, is not the utility of the Bank obvious 
to every man, who will look abroad into the country fairly and 
independently? No sober man, we believe, can see, how the 
general government, while there are twenty-four States, with un- 

* Since the above remarks were written, Mr. Madison's admirable letter to Mr 
Ingersoli, dated June 25, 183], bas been jjiiblislicd. It is marked with afl bis pecu 
liar wisdom and jxiwcr ; and, we apprehend, puts at rest Uie question it discusses. 



(17) 

limited powers for creating Banks, can do common justice to its 
own affairs without a similar institution. Our revenue is collected 
by eight or nine thousand persons, scattered over our immense 
territory, who now remit it to the national treasury, by means 
of the Bank of the United States, through a safe channel and in 
a uniform and sound currency. But, what would become of it, 
if there were no such safe medium 1 The answer is plain. Each 
collector, of the eight or nine thousand, would then be left to his 
own discretion, and to the currency of the part of the country 
with which he may happen to be connected ; the revenue would 
be wasted away by losses in its tranmissions, and especially by 
losses in depreciated paper; and the different portions of the coun- 
try, paying different rates of duty to the government, from their 
different currencies, would, from this circumstance alone, be 
speedily brought into controversy and conflict. All this, too, is 
not only obvious to every one, who will reason on the conse- 
quences of what is before his own eyes, but to every one who 
will recall what has absolutely happened within his own recollec- 
tion. It is the state of things, into which we were actually brought 
no longer ago, than in 1814 — 181G, for want of a national Bank; 
and, out of which, the present Bank and the treasury, acting 
under Mr. Webster's resolution of April 30, 1816, have, with 
great wisdom and with great difficulty, rescued us. The true 
question, therefore, so far as the usefulness of the Bank is con- 
cerned, is, whether, with our eyes open and with full warning and 
experience of the consequences, we shall voluntarily plunge back 
again into the confusion, embarrassment, losses, and colHsions 
arising from an unsound currency, out of which we have so re- 
cently escaped 1 

Some persons, however, have proposed a remedy for this, 
without resorting to a Bank. Restore, they say very coolly, — 
restore a metallic currency, and put down the State Banks, and 
let all government transactions be carried on in gold and silver. 
This, to be sure, would be safe enough, though it would, undoubt- 
edly, be an inconvenient approximation to the institutions of Ly- 
curgus. But before we admit it to be a benefit, there are two 
questions to be settled : — first ; is it desirable to put down the State 
Banks? — and, second; is it possible to restore a metaUic cur- 
rency? Every practical and judicious man in the country, we 
believe, would answer both of them in the negative. The State 
Banks, when wisely managed, are great public benefits, and, even 
when ill managed, the States cannot be prevented from establish- 
ing them, and will not give up the power to sustain them. And, 
as to a metallic currency, all the legislation of all the govern- 
ments in the country could not introduce it, at a less cost, than the 
universal destruction of enterprise and industry. 

What, then, remains ? Unquestionably we must come back to 
the old and tried remedy of a National Bank. It is the only power, 
which can, at the same time, sustain and assist the State Banks, 
when they ought to be upheld, and control them, when they 



( 19) 

threaten to become injurious from excessive issues ; — exercising 
towards them, functions similar to those which the General Gov- 
ernment exercises towards the States. This control, too, enjoys 
the immense advantage of having been tried and found at once 
kindly and safe in its operations. The whole people of the United 
States have been witnessing it. They know it works well ; and 
that is all they require. While it continues, and continues under 
its present excellent and efficient management, the old difficulty 
of some States with a sound currency, and some with an unsound, 
by which a part of the citizens should pay their debts to the gov- 
ernment in good money and a part of them in money worth 20 
per cent, less ; — this difficulty, and the vast mischiefs that neces- 
sarily follow it, cannot recur. But, take away the Bank, and this 
vast evil comes back of course. The people of the United States, 
however, we are persuaded, are not ready to offer this premium 
on the insolvency of States and State Banks, or to introduce the 
conliicts between different portions of the country, and the injury 
to industry and enterprise, that would be its speedy and inevitable 
consequence. 

The question, therefore, 7nusi be, not wliether any National 
Bank shall exist ; but whether the present one shall be continued, 
or whether a neio one shall be created. We arc in favor of the 
continuance and re-chartering of the present Bank. For, in the 
first place, its mere existence; its wise and judicious manage- 
ment ; the great good it has done, and is doing, are all in favor 
of its continuance. Wg are all familiar with it, and know how it 
operates ; we know, it is fulfilling the very purpose for which it 
was created, and that it is fulfilling them beneficially and effectu- 
ally. Why, then, destroy it ? — In the second place, tiicre would 
be not a little confusion, embarrassment and injury to different 
interests, in the intermediate state between the operations of the 
old Bank and the new one ; — while winding up one concern and 
opening another ; — and all, too, to change a machine whicli works 
well for one which has not been tried. And in the third place, 
the nation would sustain, at the same time, a severe and needless 
loss. For the government now owns seven millions of stock in 
the present Bank, worth this day $130 for each $100. To destroy 
the present Bank is, to reduce the value of its stock to par ; — that 
is, so far as the nation is concerned, to sink 82.100.000 of na- 
tional property. But the new Bank may be able and willing to 
give the same bonus the present one would; — say $1,500,000, so 
that the absolute dead loss of this part of the transaction will be 
$600,000. But then, on the other hand, by continuing the present 
Bank, the nation gains the $2,100,000 and the bonus besides, or 
three millions six hundred thousand dollars. The difference, then, 
between losing $000,000 and making $3.(500.000 ; that is the sum 
of fcnir millions, two hundred thousand dollars, is the least loss the 
nation will sustain, in a merely pecuniary point of view, by the 
change, as any body can understand who is acquainted with com- 
mon accounts. And all this, too, in order to substitute a machine, 



( 19) 

whose operation has not been tried, for one which we know works 

well. 

And what would be gained, or what is proposed to be gained 
by a change, which should create a new Bank? Nothing but a 
new set of stockholders. And suppose the new stock to be given 
to exactly such favorites as the administration, for the time being, 
might desire, or suppose it to be as much subdivided as possible, 
and to be carried into the smallest channels of private investment ; 
what would be the consequence? Speculations would at once 
take place ; the stock would be sold and resold ; and, just as surely 
as the principle of gravitation will bring water to its level, just so 
surely the new stock, like all similar property, would find its way 
into the hands that have held the old ; — that is, the hands of the cap- 
italists. Thus we should end just as we began ; though, probably, 
not until the Bank itself should have gone through the seasoning of 
a good deal of mismanagement ; and certainly not until individual 
property should have been much injured, and four millions three 
hundred thousand dollars of the money of the country sacrificed. 

But suppose the present Bank to be re-chartered, — shall any 
change be made in its chartered rights 1 Some have thought, the 
States should have a share in its management. But why so 1 The 
United States have none in the management of the State Banks. 
The most important object of the United States' Bank is, to exer- 
cise a beneficial control over the currency, and thus prevent the 
State Banks from running into excessive issues of paper, and so 
degrading it and rendering it unsound. But many of the State 
Banks, like those of Alabama, Georgia, and South CaroHna, are 
ihe exclusive property of their respective States. Shall, then, 
these same States have power over the Bank of the United States ? 
It is absurd. The true principle undoubtedly is, to make them, as 
far as possible, independent of each other ; and then they can act 
on each other only for the benefit of the community. 

This, in truth, is the point, upon which the whole question turns 
or ought to turn ; — What course in relation to the Bank of the 
United States is most for the benefit of the community ; for the 
benefit of the whole people? Certainly, nothing the national 
liCgislature can do for the Nation, or give to it, or continue to it, 
is a more direct and important blessing to every individual it con- 
tains, than a sound currency. We have it now, we had it not in 
1815 and 1816. What lost it to us? The surrender of all control 
over it by the United States, when the re-chartering of the old 
Bank was refused. ,What restored it to us, and placed us where 
we now are ? The resumption and exercise of that control in 
1816. Why, then, are men found, who, with such facts as these, 
which no sophistry can mystify, and such a plain and bitter expe- 
rience which we all have felt ; — why are there men, who wish 
that all these facts and all this experience should be lost upon us ? 
Let their consciences, their interests, and their passions answer. 

But, to return to Mr. Webster; — it was at this period, 1816, 
that he determined to change his residence, and, of course, to re- 



(20) 

tire, for a time at least, from public life. He had now lived in 
Portsmouth nine years ; and they had been to him years of great 
happiness in his private relations, and, in his relations to the coun- 
try, years of remarkable advancement and honor. But, in the 
disastrous fire, which, in 1813, destroyed a large part of that de- 
voted town, he had sustained a heavy loss, which the means and 
opportunities offered by his profession in New-Hampshire were 
not likely to repair. He determined, therefore, to establish him- 
self in a larger capital, where his resources would be more am- 
ple, and, in the summer of 1816, removed to Boston, where he 
has ever since resided. 

His object now was professional occupation, and he devoted 
him.self to it for six or eight years exclusively, with unremitting 
assiduity, refusing to accept otiice, or to mingle in political discus- 
sion. -His success corresponded to his exertions. He was al- 
ready known as a distinguished lawyer in his native state ; and 
the two terms he had served in Congress, had placed him, not- 
withstanding his comparative youth, among the prominent states- 
men of the country. His rank as a jurist, in the general regard 
of the nation, was now no less speedily determined. Like many 
other eminent members of the profession, however, who have 
rarely been able to select at first what cases should be intrusted 
to them, it was not for him to arrange or determine the time and 
the occasion, when his powers should be decisively measured and 
made known. We must, therefore, account it for a fortunate ac- 
cident, though perhaps (me of those accidents granted only to 
talent like his, that the occasion was the well-known case of 
Dartmouth College; and, we must add, as a circumstance no less 
fortunate, that the forum where he was called to defend the prin- 
ciples of this great cause, and where he did defend them so tri- 
umphantly, was that of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
at Washington. 

There is, indeed, something pecuUar in this grave national tri- 
bunal, especially with regard to the means and motives it oflTersto 
call out distinguished talent, and try and confirm a just reputation, 
which is worth notice. The judges themselves, selected from 
among the great jurists of the country, as above ignorance, weak- 
ness, and the temptations of political ambition, — with that vene- 
rable man at their head, who for thirty years has been the orna- 
ment of the government, and, in whose wisdom has been, in no 
small degree, the hiding of its power — constitute a tribunal, which 
may be truly called solemn and august. Tiit^ advocates, too, who 
appear before it, are no less a chosen few, full of talent and skill, 
and eager with ambition, who go there from all the ends of the 
country, to discuss the gravest and most important interests both 
public and private, — to settle the conflicts between domestic and 
foreign jurisprudence, or the more perilous conflicts between the 
authority of the individual states, and that of the general govern- 
ment ; — in short, to return constantly upon the first great princi- 
ples of national and municipal adjudication, and take heed, that, 



(21 ) 

whatever is determined shall rest only on the deep and sure foun- 
dations of truth, right, and law. And, finally, if we turn from the 
bench and the bar, to the audience which is collected around them, 
we shall find again much that is remarkable, and even imposing. 
We shall find, that, large as it is, it is gathered together from a 
city not populous, where every thing, even the resources of fashion, 
must have a direct dependence on the operations of government ; 
and where the senators themselves, and the representatives of 
foreign powers, no less than the crowds collected during the ses- 
sion of Congress, by the solicitations of an enlightened curiosity, 
or of a strenuous indolence, can, after all, discover no resort so 
full of a stirring interest and excitement, as that of the Supreme 
Court, into whose arena such practised and powerful gladiators 
daily descend, rejoicing in the combat. Taking it in all its con- 
nexions, then, we look upon this highest tribunal of the country, 
not only to be solemn and imposing in itself, but to be one of pe- 
culiar power over the reputations of these jurists and advocates, 
who appear before it, and who must necessarily feel themselves 
to be standing singularly in presence of the nation, represented 
there as it is, in almost every way, and by almost every class, 
from the fashion and beauty lounging on the sofas in the recesses 
of the court-room, up to the eager antagonists, who are impa- 
tiently waiting their time to contend for the mastery on some great 
interest or principle, and the judges who are ultimately to decide it. 

Mr. Webster had already appeared once or twice before this 
tribunal ; — but not in any cause which had called seriously into 
action the powers of his mind. The case of Dartmouth College, 
however, was one that might well task the faculties of any man. 
That institution, founded originally by charter from the king of 
Great Britain, had been in successful operation nearly half a cen- 
tury, when, in 1816, the Legislature of New-Hampshire, from 
some movements in party poUtics, was induced, without the con- 
sent of the college, to annul its charter, and, by several acts, to 
give it a new incorporation and name. The trustees of the col- 
lege resisted this interference ; and, in 1817, commenced an action 
in the state courts, which was decided against them. A writ of 
error was then sued out by the original plaintiffs, to remove the 
cause, for its final adjudication, to the Supreme Court of the United 
States; and it came on there for argument in March, 1818. 

The court-room was excessively crowded, not only with a large 
assemblage of the eminent lawyers of the Union, but with many 
of its leading statesmen, — drawn there no less by the importance 
of the cause, and the wide results that would follow its decision, 
than by the known eloquence of Mr. Hopkinson and Mr. Wirt, 
both of whom were engaged in it. Mr. Webster opened it, on 
behalf of the college. The question turned mainly on the point, 
whether the acts of the Legislature of New-Hampshire, in rela- 
tion to Dartmouth College, constituted a violation of a contract ; 
for, if they did, then they were contrary to the Constitution of 
the United'States. The principles involved, therefore, went to da- 



(22) 

termine the extent to which a legislature can exercise authority 
over the chartered rights of all corporations ; and this of course 
gave the case an importance at the time, and a value since, para- 
mount to that of almost any other in the books. Mr. Webster's 
argument is given in this volume at p. 110, et seq. ; that is, we 
have there the technical outline, the dry skeleton of it. But those 
who heard him, when it was originally delivered, still wonder 
how such dry bones could ever have lived with the power they 
there witnessed and felt. He opened his cause, as he always 
does, with perfect simplicity in the general statement of its facts ; 
and then went on to unfold the topics of his argument, in a lucid 
order, which made each position sustain every other. The logic 
and the law were rendered irresistible. But, as he advanced, his 
heart warmed to the subject and the occasion. Thoughts and 
feelings, that had grown old with his best affections, rose unbid- 
den to his lips. He remembered that the institution he was de- 
fending, was the one where his own youth had been nurtured ; 
and the moral tenderness and beauty this gave to the grandeur of 
his thoughts ; the sort of religious sensibility it imparted to his 
urgent appeals and demands for the stern fulfilment of what law 
and justice required, wrought up the whole audience to an extra- 
ordinary state of excitement. Many betrayed strong agitation ; 
many were dissolved in tears. When he ceased to speak, there 
was a perceptible interval before any one was willing to break 
the silence ; and, when that vast ci'owd separated, not one person 
of the whole number doubted, that the young man who had that 
day so moved, astonished, and controlled them, had vindicated for 
himself a place at the side of the first jurists of the country. 

From this period, therefore, Mr. Webster's attendance on the 
Supreme Court at Washington has been constantly secured by re- 
tainers, in the most important causes ; and the circle of his pro- 
fessional business, which has been regularly enlarging, has not 
been exceeded, if it has been equalled, by that of any other law- 
yer who has ever appeared in the national forum. The volume 
before us contains, indeed, few traces of all this. It contains, 
however, two arguments upon constitutional questions of great 
interest and wide results. One is the case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, 
in 1824, involving the question, how far a state has authority to 
grant the exclusive right of navigating the tide-waters within its 
territorial limits ; refusing that right to all persons belonging to 
other states, as well as to its own citizens. This question struck, 
of course, at the great steam-boat monopoly granted by the state 
of New- York, from motives of public munificence, to Mr. Fulton, 
the admirable first mover of that national benefit, and Chancellor 
Livingston, its early and adventurous patron. The case was ar- 
gued by Mr. Webster and Mr. Wirt against the monopoly, and by 
Mr. Oakley and Mr. Emmet for it ; so that probably as much 
ability was brought into the discussion on each side, as has been 
called for by any single cause in our judicial annals. The result 
was, that the monopoly was declared to be unconstitutional ; and 



(23) 

thus another great national blessing was obtained, hardly less im- 
portant than the original invention, — that of throwing open the 
right of steam-navigation to the competition of the whole Union. 
There were circumstances which gave uncommon interest to 
this cause, independently of its great constitutional importance, 
and the wide consequences involved in it. It had been litigated, 
during a series of years, in every form, in the state courts of New- 
York, where the monopoly had triumphed over all opposition. 
And it need hardly be said, that the state courts of New-York have 
maintained as proud a reputation for learning, research, and tal- 
ent, as any in the Union. What lawyer has not sat gladly at the 
feet of Chancellor Kent, and Chief Justice Spencer '( And what 
state, in relation to her jurisprudence, can so boldly say — 

" Quse regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?" 

Mr. Webster's argument in the opening of this case, — which was 
closed with great power by the Attorney-General, Mr. Wirt, — fur- 
nishes, even in the meager outline still preserved, p. 170 — 184, a 
specimen of some of the characteristics of his mind. We here 
see his clearness and downright simplicity in stating facts ; his 
acute suggestion and analysis of difficulties ; his peculiar power 
of disentangling complicated propositions, and resolving them into 
elements so plain, as to be intelligible to the simplest minds ; and 
his wariness not to be betrayed into untenable positions, or to spread 
his forces over useless ground. We see him, indeed, fortifying 
himself, as it were, strongly within the narrowest limits of his cause, 
concentrating his strength, and ready at any moment to enter, like 
a skilful general, at all the weak points of his adversary's position. 
This argument, therefore, especially as it was originally pro- 
nounced in court, we look upon, as a whole, to have been equally 
remarkable for depth and sagacity ; for the choice and compre- 
hensiveness of the topics ; and for the power and tact exhibited 
in their discussion. Yet we are carried along so quietly by its 
deep current, that, like Partridge in Tom Jones, when he saw Gar- 
rick act Hamlet, all seems to us so spontaneous, so completely 
without effort, that we are convinced, nay, we feel sure, there is 
neither artifice nor mystery, extraordinary power nor genius, in 
the whole matter. But, to those who are familiar with Mr. Web- 
ster, and the workings of his mind, it is well known, that, in this 
very plainness ; in this earnest pursuit of truth for truth's sake, 
and of the principles of law for the sake of right and justice, and 
in his obvious desire to reach them all by the most direct and sim- 
ple means, is to be found no small part of the secret of his power. 
It is this, in fact, above every thing else, that makes him so prev- 
alent with the jury ; and, not only with the jury in court, but 
with the great jury of the whole people. 

The same general remarks are applicable to his argument in the 
case of Ogden against Saunders, in 1827, which we notice now, 
out of the regular series of events, in order to finish at once the 
little we can say of his professional career as a lawyer. The case 
to which we now refer, involved the question of the constitution- 



( '^^4 ) 

ality of state insolvent laws, when they purported to absolve the 
party from the obligation of the contract, as well as from personal 
imprisonment, on execution. In a legal and constitutional point of 
view, this has always been thought one of Mr. Webster's ablest 
and most convincing arguments. Witii the court he was only 
half successful ; there being a remarkable diversity of opinion 
among the judges. But, taken in connexion with the opinion of 
Chief Justice Marshall, delivered in the case, with which Mr. Web- 
ster's argument coincides, both in reasoning and in conclusion, it 
seems absolutely to have exhausted the whole range of the discus- 
sion on that side, and to furnish all that future inquirers can need 
to master the question. 

But, during the years we have just passed over, Mr. Webster's 
success was not confined to the bar. In the year 1820-21, a 
convention of delegates was assembled in Boston, to revise the 
constitution of Massachusetts. As it was one of those primary 
assemblies, where no office disqualifies from membership, and as 
the occasion was one of the rarest importance, the talent and 
wisdom, the fortunes and authority of that commonwealth were, 
to a singular degi-ee, collected in it. The venerable John Adams, 
then above eighty-five years old, represented his native village ; 
Mr. Justice Story, of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
was a delegate from Salem ; Judge Davis, of the District Court 
of the United States, and the greater part of the judicial officers 
of the state, were there, as well as a large number of the leading 
members of the Massachusetts bar, and a still larger number of 
its wealthiest or most prominent land-holders and merchants. No 
assembly of equal dignity and talent was ever collected in that 
commonwealth. Mr. Webster was one of the delegates from 
Boston. What influence he exerted, or how beneficial, or how 
extensive it was, can be entirely known only there where it was 
put forth. But, if we may judge from the important committees 
on which he served ; the prominent interests and individuals his 
duty called him occasionally to defend, to encounter, and to op- 
pose ; and the business-like air of his short remarks, which are 
scattered up and down through the whole volume of the " Journal 
of Debates and Proceedings" of this convention, published soon 
afterwards, we should be led to believe, that, though he was then 
but a newly adopted child of Massachusetts, he had already gain- 
ed a degree of confidence, respect and authority, to which few 
in that ancient commonwealth could lay claim. The fruits of it 
all, in the present volume, are, a short speech on " Oaths of Of- 
fice ;" another on " the removal of Judges upon the address of 
two-thirds of each branch of the Legislature ;" and a more am- 
ple and very powerful one on the " Principle of representation 
in the Senate." They are all strong and striking ; and it would 
be easy to extract something from each, characteristic of its 
author ; but we have not room, and must content ourselves with 
referring, for a specimen of the whole, to the remarks on the free- 
schools of New-England, from the speech in the Senate, which 



(25) 

we have already cited ; adding merely, that, to this remarkable 
speech of Mr. Webster, and to another of great beauty and force, 
by Mr. Justice Story, was ascribed, at the time, a change in the 
opinions and vote of the convention, which, considering the im- 
portance of the subject, and the long discussion it had undergone, 
was all but unprecedented.* 

While this convention was still in session, a great anniversary 
came round at the north. The two hundredth year from the first 
landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, was completed on the 22d 
of December, 1820 ; and every man born in New-England, or 
in whose veins stirred a drop of New-England blood, felt that he 
had an interest in the event it recalled, and demanded its grateful 
celebration. Preparations, therefore, for its commemoration, on 
the spot where it occurred, were made long beforehand ; and, by 
the sure indication of the public will, and at the special invitation 
of the Pilgrim Society, Mr. Webster was summoned as the man 
who should go to the Rock of Plymouth, and there so speak of 
the centuries past, as that the centuries to come should still re- 
ceive and heed his words. Undoubtedly he amply fulfilled the 
expectations that waited on this great occasion. His address, 
which opens the present volume, is one of the gravest produc- 
tions it contains. He seems to feel that the ground on which he 
stands is holy; and the deep moral sensibility, and even religious 
solemnity, which pervade many parts of this striking discourse, 
— where he seems to have collected the experience of all the 
past, in order to minister warning and encouragement to all the 
future, — is in perfect harmony with the scene and the occasion, 
and produced its appropriate effect on the multitude elected, even 
at that inclement season, from the body of the New-England 
states, to offer up thanksgivings for their descent from the Pilgrim 
fathers. The effect, too, at the time, has been justified by a wider 
success since ; and the multiphed editions of the printed discourse, 
while they have carried it into the farm-houses and hearts of the 
New-England yeomanry, are at the same time insuring its pas- 
sage onward to the next generation, and the next, who may be 
well satisfied, when the same jubilee comes round, if they can 
leave behind them monuments equally imposing, to mark the lapse 
and revolutions of ages. 

It would not be difficult to select eloquent passages from this 
discourse. We prefer, however, to take one containing what 
was then a plain and adventurous prediction ; but what is now 
passing into history before our very eyes. We allude to the re- 
inarks on the principle of the subdivision of property in France, 
as affecting the permanency of the French government, which 
Mr. Webster ventured to call in question, on the same general 
grounds, on which he undertook to prove the permanency of 
our own. 

" A most interesting experiment of the effect of a subdivision of property on gov- 
ernment, is now making in France. It is miderstood, that the law regulating the 

* North American Review, 1821. Vol. xii. p. 342. 

D 



( 26 ) 

transmission of property, in that country, now divides it, real and personal, among all 
the children, equally, both sons and daughters ; and that there is, also, a very great 
restraint on the power of making dispositions of property by will. It has been sup- 
posed, that the effects of this might probably be, in time, to break up the soil into 
such small subdivisions, that the proprietors would be too poor to resist the encroach- 
ments of executive power. I think far otherwise. What is lost in individual wealth, 
will be more than gained in numbers, in intelligence, and in a sympathy of senti- 
ment. If, indeed, only one, or a few landholders were to resist the crown, like the 
barons of England, they must, of course, be great and powerful landholders with 
multitudes of retainers, to promise success. But if the proprietors of a given extent 
of territory are summoned to resistance, there is no reason to believe that such resist- 
ance would be less forcible, or less successful, because the number of such proprietors 
should be great. Each would perceive his own importance, and his own interest, and 
would feel that natural elevation of character which the consciousness of property in- 
spires. A common sentiment would unite all, and numbers would not only add 
strength, but excite enthusiasm. It is true, that France possesses a vast military 
force, under the direction of an hereditary executive government, and military power, 
it is possible, may overthrow any government. It is in vain, however, in this period 
of the world, to look for security against military power, to the arm of the great land- 
holders. That notion is derived from a state of things long since past ; a state in 
which a feudal baron, with his retainers, might stand against the sovereign, who was 
himself but the greatest baron, and his retainers. But at present, what could the 
richest landholder do, against one regiment of disciplined troops ? Other securities, 
therefore, against the prevalence of military power must be provided. Happily for us, 
we are not so situated as that any purpose of national defence requires, ordinarily and 
constantly, such a military force as might seriously endanger our liberties. 

" In respect, however, to the recent law of succession in France, to which I have 
alluded, I would, presumptuously, perhaps, hazard a conjecture, that if the government 
do not change the law, the law, in half a century, will change the government ; and that 
this change tvill be not in favor of the power of the crown, as some European writers 
have supposed, but against it. Those writers only reason upon what tiiey think cor- 
rect general principles, in relation to this subject. They acknowledge a want of ex- 
perience. Here we have had that experience ; and we know that a multitude of 
small proprietors, acting with inteUigence, and that enthusiasm which a common 
cause inspires, constitute not only a formidable, but an invincible power." pp. 47-8. 

In less than six years from the time when this statesmanlike 
prediction was made, the King of France, at the opening of the 
Legislative Chambers, thus strangely and portentously echoed it, 

" Legislation ought to provide, by successive improvements, for all the wants of 
society. The progressive partitioning of landed estates essentially contrary to the 
spirit of a monarchical government would enfeeble the guarantees which the charter 
has given to my throne and to my subjects. Measures will be proposed to you, gen- 
tlemen, to establish the consistency which ought to exist between the political law 
and the civil law ; and to preserve the patrimony of families, without restricting the 
liberty of disposing of one's property. Tlie preservation of families is connected with, 
and affords a guarantee to political stability, which is the first want of states, and 
which is especially that of France after so many vicissitudes." 

But the discovery came too late. The foundations, on which to 
build or sustain the cumbrous system of the old monarchy, were 
already taken away ; and the events of the last summer, while 
they would almost persuade us, that the " Attendant Spirit" so 
boldly given by the orator in this very discourse to one of the 
great founders of our government, had opened to him, also, on the 
Rock of Plymouth, " a vision of the future ;"* — these events, we 
. say, can leave little doubt in the mind of any man, that the speaker 
himself may live long enough, — as God grant he may ! — to wit- 
ness the entire fulfilment of his own extraordinary prophecy, and 

* See the beautiful passage respecting the fortune and the life of John Adams, at p. 44. 



(27) 

to see the French people erecting for themselves a sure and stable 
government, suited to the foundation, on which alone it can now 
rest. 

In 1825, Mr. Webster was called to interpret the feelings of 
New-England, on another great festival and anniversary. Fifty 
years from the day, when the grave drama of the American Revo- 
lution was opened with such picturesque solemnity, as a magnifi- 
cent show on Bunker's Hill, witnessed by the whole neighboring 
city and country, clustering by thousands on their steeples, the 
roofs of their houses, and the hill-tops, and waiting with unspeaka- 
ble anxiety the results of the scene that was passing before their 
eyes, — fifty years from that day, it was determined to lay, with 
no less solemnity, the corner-stone of a monument worthy to com- 
memorate its importance. An immense m.ultitude was assembled. 
They stood on that consecrated spot, with only the heavens over 
their heads, and beneath their feet the bones of their fathers; 
amidst the visible remains of the very redoubt thrown up by 
Prescott, and defended by him to the very last desperate extrem- 
ity ;* and with the names of Warren, Putnam, Stark, and Brooks, 
and the other leaders or victims of that great day, frequent and 
familiar on their lips. In the midst of such a scene and with such 
recollections, starting like the spirits of the dead from the very 
sods of that hill-side, it may well be imagined, that words like the 
following, addressed to a vast audience, — composed in no small 
degree of the survivors of the battle, their children, and their 
grandchildren, — produced an eifect, which only the hand of death 
can efface. 

" We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious actions is most safely deposited in 
the universal remembrance of mankind. We know, that if we could cause this struc- 
ture to ascend, not only till it reached the skies, but till it pierced them, its broad 
surfaces could slill contain but part of that, which, in an age of knowledge, hath al- 
ready been spread over the earth, and which history charges itself with making 
known to all future times. We know, that no inscription on entablatures less broad 
than the earth itself, can carry information of the events we commemorate, where it 
has' not already gone ; and that no structure, which shall not outlive the duration of 
letters and knowledge among men, can prolong the memorial. But our object is, by 
this edifice, to show our own deep sense of the value and importance of the achieve- 
ments of our ancestors ; and, by presenting this work of gratitude to the eye, to keep 
alive similar sentiments, and to foster a constant regard for the principles of the 
Revolution. Human beings are composed not of reason only, but of imagination also, 
and sentiment ; and that is neither wasted nor misapplied which is appropriated to 
the purpose of giving right direction to sentiments, and opening proper springs of 
feeling in the heart. Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national 
hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We 
consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light 

* In an able article on the battle of Bunker's Hill, which is found in the North 
American Review, 1818, VII. 225—258, and is understood to have been written by 
Mr. Webster, he says, — " In truth, if there was any commander-in-chief in the ac- 
tion, it was Prescott. From the first breaking of the ground to the retreat, he acted 
the most important ■part ; and if it were now proper to give the battle a name from any 
distinguished agent in it, it should be called, Prescott's battle." We have no doubt 
this is but an exact measure of justice to one of those who hazarded all in our revolu- 
tion, when the hazard was the greatest The whole review is strong, and no one 
hereafter can write the history of the period it refers to, without consulting it. The 
opening description of the battle is beautiful and picturesque. 



(28) 

of peace may rest upon it for ever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that 
unmeasured benefit, which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy in- 
fluences, which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of 
mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot, which must for ever be dear to 
us and our posterity. We wish, that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his 
eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished, where the first great 
battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish, that this structure may proclaim the 
magnitude and importance of that event, to every class and every age. We wish, 
that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary 
and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it sug- 
gests. We wish, that labor may look up here, and be proud, in the midst of its toil. 
We wish, that, in those days of disaster, which, as they come on all nations, must be 
expected to come on us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and 
be assured that the foundations of oiu national power still stand strong. We wish, 
that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples 
dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of de- 
pendence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object on the sight of him 
who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be some- 
thing which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it 
rise, till it meet the sun in his coming ; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, 
and parting day linger and play on its sumroit." pp. 58-9. 

The last formal address delivered by Mr. Webster on any great 
public occasion, was unexpectedly called from him in the summer 
of 1826, in commemoration of the services of Adams and Jeffer- 
son ; — an occasion so remarkable, that what was said and felt on 
it, will not pass out of the memories of the present generation. 
We shall, therefore, only make one short extract from Mr. Web- 
ster's address atFaneuil Hall — the description of the peculiar elo- 
quence of Mr. Adams, in giving which, the speaker becomes, 
himself, a living example of what he describes. 

" The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character, and formed, in- 
deed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and energetic ; and such the crisis required. 
When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests 
are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable, in speech, farther than 
it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and 
earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does 
not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil 
for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every 
way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the 
occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may 
aspire after it — they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking 
of a fountain from tiie earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, 
original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and 
studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the 
fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. 
Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory con- 
temptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked, and subdued, as in the presence of 
higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then .self devotion is eloquent. The 
clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm re- 
solve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing 
every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his otycct — this, 
tills i.s eloquence ; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it 
is action, noble, sublime, god-like action." Page 84. 

During a part, however, of the period, over which we have thus 
very .slightly pas.sed, Mr. Webster was again in public life. He was 
elected to represent the city of Boston, in the seventeenth Congress, 
and took his seat there in December, 1823. Early in the session. 



(29 ) 

he presented a resolution in favor of appointing a commissioner 
or agent to Greece; and the resohition being taken up on the 
19th of January following, Mr. Webster delivered the speech, 
which usually passes under the name of " the Greek Speech." 
His object, however, in presenting the resolution, did not seem, at 
first, to be well understood. It was believed, that, seeing the ex- 
istence of a warm public sympathy for the suffering Greeks, and 
solicited by the attractions of the subject itself, and of the classi- 
cal associations awakened by it, his object was to parade a few 
sentences and figures, and so make an oration or harangue, which 
might usher him, with some 6clat, a second time, upon the theatre 
of public affairs. The galleries, therefore, were thronged with a 
brilHant and fashionable audience. But the crowd was destined 
to be disappointed ; — Mr. Webster, after a graceful and conciliat- 
ing introduction, in which he evidently disclaimed any such 
purpose, addressed himself at once to the subject, and made, what 
he always makes, a powerful, but a downright business speech. 
His object, instead of being the narrow one suggested for him, 
was apparent, as he advanced, to be the broadest possible. It was 
nothing less, than to take occasion of the Greek revolution, and 
the conduct pursued in regard to it by the great continental powers, 
in order to exhibit the principles laid down and avowed by those 
powers, as the basis on which they intended to maintain the peace 
of Europe. In doing this, he w^ent through a very able examina- 
tion of the proceedings of all the famous Congresses, beginning 
with that of Paris, in 1814, and coming down to that of Laybach, 
in 1821 ; — the principles of all w^hich were, that the people hold 
their fundamental rights and privileges, as matter of concession 
and indulgence from the sovereign power ; and that all sovereign 
powers have a right to interfere and control other nations, in 
their desires and attempts to change their own governments : — 

" The ultimate effect of this alliance of sovereigns, for objects personal to them- 
selves, or respecting only the permanency of their own power, must be the destruc- 
tion of all just feeling, and all natural sympathy, between those who exercise the 
power of government, and those who are subject to it. The old channels of mutual 
regard and confidence are to be dried up, or cut off. Obedience can now be expected 
no longer than it is enforced. Instead of relying on the affections of the governed, 
sovereigns are to rely on the affections and friendship of other sovereigns. Theyjare, 
in short, no longer to be nations. Princes and people no longer are to unite for inter- 
ests common to them both. There is to be an end of all patriotism, as a distinct na- 
tional feeling. Society is to be divided horizontally ; all sovereigns above, and all 
subjects below ; the former coalescing for their own security, and tor the more cer- 
tain subjection of the undistinguished multitude beneath." Page 249. 

But, as he says afterwards, — 

" This reasoning mistakes the age. The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and 
armies, and subsidies, were the principal reliances even in the best cause. But, hap- 
pily for mankind, there has arrived a great change in this respect Moral causes 
come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and 
the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere 
brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the pro- 
gress of injustice and oppression ; and, as it grows more intelligent and more intense, 
it will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by military power, but it 
cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of 



(30) 

ordinary warfare. It is that impassible, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence 

and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels, 

' Vital ill every part. 
Cannot, but by anniliilating, die' 

" Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is vain for power to talk either of triumphs 
or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, what fortresses surrendered, what 
armies subdued, or what provinces overrun. In the history of the year that has passed 
by us, and in the instance of unhajtpy Spain, we have seen the vanity of all triumphs, 
in a cause whicji violates the general sense of justice of the civilized world. It is 
nothing, that the troops of France have passed from the Pyrenees to Cadiz ; it is 
nothing that an unhappy and prostrate nation has fallen before them ; it is nothing 
that arrests, and confiscation, and execution, sweep away the little remnant of national 
resistance. There is an enemy that still exists to check the glory of these triumphs. 
It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of his ovations ; it calls upon him to 
take notice that Europe, though silent, is yet indignant ; it shows him that the scep- 
tre of his victory is a barren sceptre ; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor, but 
shall moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his 
ear with the cry of injured justice, it denounces against him the indignation of an 
enlightened and civilized age ; it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and 
wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged 
the opinion of mankind. 

" In my own opinion. Sir, the Spanish nation is now nearer, not only in point of 
time, but in point of circumstance, to the acquisition of a regulated government, than 
at the moment of the French invasion. Nations must, no doubt, undergo these trials 
in their progress to the establishment of free institutions. The very trials benefit 
them, and render them more capable both of obtaining and of enjoying tJie object 
which they seek." Page 253. 

How completely does the mighty drama now passing before our 
eyes on the great theatre of Europe, justify these bold and saga- 
cious predictions ! A great revolution has just taken place in 
France, and a distinguished prince, out of the regular line of suc- 
cession, has been invited to the throne, on condition of governing 
according to the constitution prescribed by the representatives of 
the popular will. Belgium is doing the same thing. Devoted Po- 
land has attempted it. Italy is in confusion, — and Germany dis- 
turbed and uneasy ; — so that, it seems already no longer to be in 
the power of any conspiracy of kings or congresses, to maintain 
permanently in Western Europe, a government not essentially 
founded on free institutions and principles. We will only add, 
that Mr. Webster has, on hardly any other occasion, entered into 
the discussion of European politics; and the consequence has 
been, that, if this speech has found less favor at home than some 
of his other efforts, it is one, that has brought him great honor 
abroad ; since, besides being printed wherever the English tongue 
is spoken, it has been circulated through South America, and pub- 
hshed in nearly every one of the civilized languages of Europe, 
including the Spanish and the Greek. 

In April, 1824, he took a part in the great discussion of the tariff 
question ; and his speech on that occasion, as well as the one he 
delivered on the same subject in May, 1828, are both given in the ' 
volume before us. Rut the wliol? matter is so fresh in the recol- 
lections of the community, and Mr. Webster's constant defence 
of a tariff adapted to the general interests of the country, en- 
couraging alike the cause of American manufactures and the in- 
terests of commerce, are so well known, from the first tariff of 
1816, to the present moment, that it cannot be needful to speak 



(31 ) 

of them. We would remark, however, that, in the speech of 1824, 
two subjects are discussed with great ability ; — the doctrine of ex- 
change, and the balance of trade. Both of them had been drawn 
into controversy in Congress, on previous occasions, quite fre- 
quently, calling forth alternately " an infinite deal of nothing," and 
the crudest absurdities ; but, from the period of this thorough and 
statesmanlike examination of them, they have, we believe, hardly 
been heard of in either house. The great points involved in both 
of them, have been considered as settled. 

We have thus far spoken of Mr. Webster almost entirely as a 
public orator and debater, or as a jurist. But there is another 
point of view, in which he is less known to the nation, but no less 
valued at Washington. He has few equals in the diligence of the 
committee-rooms. Reputation in and out of Congress, is, in this 
respect, very differently measured. Nothing is more common in 
'either House than moderately good speakers, prompt in common 
debate, and sufficiently well instructed not to betray themselves 
into contempt with the public. Because they can speak and do 
speak ; and especially because they speak often and vehemently, 
they obtain a transient credit abroad for far more than they are 
worth, and far more than they are, at last, able to maintain. It 
may, indeed, be said, as a general truth, that those who speak most 
frequently in Congress are least heeded, and least entitled to dis- 
tinction. Members of real ability speak rarely ; and, when they 
do speak, it is from the fullness of their minds, after a careful con- 
sideration of the subject, and with a deference for the body they 
address, and a regard to the public service, which does not permit 
them to occupy more time than the development of their subject 
absolutely requires. They are, therefore, always heard with at- 
tention and respect ; and often with the conviction, that they may 
be safely followed. 

But there is another class in Congress, less known to the public 
at large, and yet whose services are beyond price. We speak 
now of those excellent men, who, as chairmen and members of 
the committees, in the retired corners of the capitol, are doing the 
real business of legislation, and giving their days and nights to 
maturing schemes of wild policy and just relief; men who are 
content, week after week, and month after month, to sacrifice 
themselves to the negative toil of saving us from the follies of in- 
discreet, meddlesome, and ignorant innovators, or from the more 
presumptuous purposes of those who would make legislation the 
means of furthering and gratifying their own private, unprinci- 
pled ambition. Such business-men, — who should be the heads of 
the working party, if such a party should ever be formed, — are 
well understood within the walls of Congress. They are marked 
by the general confidence that follows them; and when they 
speak, to propose a measure, they are listened to ; nay, it may al- 
most be said, they are obeyed. 

Mr. Webster has long been known as an efficient laborer in 
these noiseless toils of the committee-rooms and of practical leg- 



(32) 

islation ; and we owe to his hand not a few important improve- 
ments in our laws. The most remarkable is, probably, the 
Crimes-Act of 1825, which, in twenty-six sections, did so much 
for the criminal code of the country. The whole subject, when he 
approached it, was full of difficulties and deficiencies. The law 
in relation to it remained substantially on the foundation of the 
first great Act of 1790, ch. 36. That act, however, though de- 
serving praise as a first attempt to meet the wants of the countrv, 
was entirely unsuited to its condition, and deficient in most im- 
portant particulars. Its defects, indeed, were so numerous, that 
half the most notorious crimes, when committed where the gen- 
eral government alone could have cognizance of them, were left 
beyond the reach of human law and punishment ; — rape, burglary, 
arson and other malicious burnings in forts, arsenals, and light- 
house establishments, together with many other oflfences, being 
wholly unprovided for. Mr. Webster's Act, which, as a just 
tribute to his exertions, already bears his name, cures these gross 
defects, besides a multitude of others ; and it was well known at 
the time, that he wished to go much further, and give a compe- 
tent system to the country on the whole criminal code, but was 
deterred by the danger of failure, if he attempted too much at 
once. Indeed, the difficulty of obtaining a patient hearing for 
any bill of such complexity and extent, is well understood in Con- 
gress ; and it is not, perhaps, an unjust reproach upon our na- 
tional legislature to confess, that even the most experienced states- 
men are rarely able to carry through any great measure of pure- 
ly practical improvement. Temporary projects, and party strifes, 
and private claims, and individual jealousies, and, above all, the 
passion for personal display in everlasting debate, offer obstacles 
to the success of mere patriotism and statesmanship, which are 
all but insurmountable. Probably no man, at that time, but Mr. 
Webster, who, in addition to his patient habits of labor in the 
committee-room, possessed the general confidence of the House, 
and had a persevering address and promptitude in answering ob- 
jections, could have succeeded in so signal an undertaking. Sir 
►Samuel Romilly and Mr. Peel have acquired lasting and merited 
reputations in England for meliorations of their criminal code. 
But they had a willing audience, and an eager support. Mr. Web- 
ster, without either, effected as much in his Crimes- Act of 1825, 
as has been effected by any single effort of these statesmen, and 
is fairly to be ranked with them among those benefactors of man- 
kind, who have enlightened the jurisprudence of their country, 
and made it at once more efficient and more humane. 

At the same session of Congress, the great question of internal 
improvements came up, and was vehemently discussed in Janu- 
ary, on the appropriation made for the western national road. 
Mr. Webster defended the principle, as he had already defended 
it in 181G; and as he has defended it constantly since, down to 
the last year and the last session, without, so far as we have seen, 
receiving any sufficient answer to the positions he took in debate 



(33) 

on these memorable occasions. Perhaps the doctrine he has so 
uniformly maintained on this subject, is less directly favorable to 
the interests of the northern than of the western states ; but it was 
high-toned and national throughout, and seems in no degree to 
have impaired the favor with which he was regarded in New- 
England. At any rate, he was re-elected, with singular unan- 
imity, to represent the city of Boston in the nineteenth Congress, 
and took his seat there anew in December, 1825. 

In both sessions of this Congress, important subjects were dis- 
cussed, and Mr. Webster bore an important part in them ; but we 
can now only suggest one or two of them. As chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee, he introduced the bill for enlarging the 
number of judges of the Supreme Court of the United States. His 
views in relation to it are contained in the remarks he made on 
the occasion, and had great weight with the House ; but the bill 
was afterwards lost through an amendment of the Senate. So, 
too, on the question of the Panama mission, involving the points 
that were first moved in 1796 in the House of Representatives, 
on occasion of the British Treaty, Mr. Webster has left on record 
his opinions, doctrines, and feelings, in a speech of great beauty 
and power, which will always be recurred to, whenever the right 
of the House of Representatives to advise the executive in rela- 
tion to the management of foreign missions may come under dis- 
cussion. But we are compelled to abstain from any further no- 
tice of them both, by want of room. 

In 1826, he had been elected, we believe, all but unanimously, 
to represent the city of Boston, in the House of Representatives ; 
but, before he took his seat, a vacancy having occurred in the 
Senate, he was chosen to fill it by the Legislature of Massachu- 
setts, of which, a great majority in both its branches, besides the 
council and the governor, belonged to the old republican party 
of the country. He was chosen, too, under circumstances which 
showed how completely his talents and lofty national bearing had 
disarmed all political animosities, and how thoroughly that com- 
monwealth claimed him as her own, and cherished his reputation 
and influence as a part of her treasures. There was no regular 
nomination of him from any quarter, nor any regular opposition ; 
and he received the appointment by a sort of general consent and 
acclamation, as if it were given with pride and pleasure, as well 
as with unhesitating confidence and respect. 

How he has borne himself in the Senate during the four ses- 
sions he has sat there, is known to the whole country. No man 
has been found tall enough to overshadow him ; no man has been 
able to attract from him, or to intercept from him, the constant 
regard of the nation. He has been so conspicuous, so prominent, 
that whatever he has done, and whatever he has said, has been 
watched and understood throughout the borders of the land, 
almost as familiarly and thoroughly as it has been at Wash- 
ington. 

But though the eyes of all have thus been fastened on him in 

E 



(34) 

such a way, that nothing relating to him can have escaped their 
notice, there is yet one occasion, where he attracted a kind and 
degree of attention, which, as it is rarely given, is so much the 
more honorable when it is obtained. We refer now, of course, 
to the occasion, when, in 1830, he overthrew the doctrines of 
nullification. Undoubtedly, in one sense of the word, Mr. Web- 
ster was taken completely by surprise, when these doctrines, for 
the first time iii the history of the country, were announced in 
the Senate ; since he was so far from any particular preparation 
to meet or answer them, that it was almost by accident he was 
in his place, when they were so unexpectedly, at least to him and 
all his friends, brought forth. In another and better sense of the 
phrase, he was not taken by surprise at all ; for the time was already 
long gone by, when, on any great question of national interest 
or constitutional principle, he could be taken unprepared or un- 
armed. We mean by this, that the discussion of the most impor- 
tant points in the memorable debate alluded to, came on incident- 
ally ; or rather that these points were thrust forward by a few 
individuals, who seemed predetermined to proceed, under cover 
of them, to the ultimate limits of personal and party violence. 

But the discussion of these doctrines, though new and strange 
in Congress, and brought on unexpectedly to their adversaries, 
was nothing new elsewhere. In some portions of the southern 
country, and especially in South Carolina, the doctrines of nulli- 
fication, connected, of course, more or less with the thought of a 
separation from the Union, had been, for nearly two years, 
familiar to the people. As far as this movement can be traced 
by any authentic documents, it may be found to have originated 
in two meetings holden by the South Carolina delegation in Con- 
gress, at General Hayne's lodgings in Washington, in May, 1828. 
From the correspondence and statements published in relation to 
these meetings, by Mr. Mitchell, General Hayne himself, Mr. 
Martin, Col. Drayton, Major Hamilton, and Mr. Carter, all of 
whom were present, it appears certain, that they, or most of 
them, had already endeavored in vain to unite the different dele- 
gations of the southern states in such a protest against the tariff', 
then recently passed, as was deemed desirable; and that they 
now met by themselves to devise some other effectual means of 
opposition ; — that Major Hamilton was with difficulty prevented 
by his colleagues from the rash step of vacating his seat in Con- 
gress, and maintained that South Carolina could defend herself 
successfully against the Union ;— that Mr. McDuffie believed a 
dissolution of the Union inevitable, if the prohibitory system were 
the settled policy of the country; and that he did not doubt the 
ability of South Carolina to sustain herself; — and that there was 
a conversation as to the effects which would be produced by a 
dissolution of the Union;— to all which Col. Drayton opposed 
himself, and the meetings broke up re ivfecia. Mr. Mitchell 
charges these dangerous doctrines more distinctly to individuals, 
and says, that Mr. McDuffie declared there was no other remedy 



(36) 

for the evil than a separation of South Carolina from the Union, 
and that he himself (Mr. McDuffie) was prepared to go all lengths. 
This is denied, but the proceeding was admitted ; and the differ- 
ence between the two statements is more a difference in the 
phraseology than in the substance. The tendency of the general 
opinion of the meeting is not to be mistaken. 

This was in May. In June, the effects of such a state of ex- 
citement among their representatives, and of the causes that 
produced it, were already apparent among the people of South 
Carolina. On the 12th of that month, a popular meeting was 
holden in the Colleton District, which sent forth an address to the 
whole state, unanimously " advising," to use their own words, 
" an attitude of open resistance to the lavjs of the Union." On the 
26th of July, a meeting of 3000 persons was holden at Edgefield 
Court-house, which passed resolutions of the same tone; and 
where, at a public dinner on the same day, Mr. McDuffie gave 
for a toast, " The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Tariff of 1828, 
" kindred acts of despotism ; — when our oppressors trace the 
" parallel, let them remember, that we are descendants of a noble 
" ancestry, and profit by the admonitions of history :" — a senti- 
ment and threat fully equal to the " whole length's doctrine" im- 
puted to him by his colleague, Mr. Mitchell. Other meetings 
were held, and the same tone of excitement was kept up by the 
same means of addresses and speeches, dinners and toasts. 

At last, in the autumn, the Legislature of South Carolina was 
assembled. The subject was brought before them by the Gover- 
nor; a committee, consisting of able and leading men, was ap- 
pointed to report on it;* and on the 19th of December, they pro- 
duced what they termed an Exposition to the Legislature of the 
State, and a Protest to Congress. This Exposition and Protest 
constitute an important and memorable document. The doctrines 
of nullification, which it was then thought could be established 
and enforced, and to strengthen which the whole summer had 
been a campaign of preparation, are here produced by the Legis- 
lature of South Carolina in bold relief, and in their most imposing 
form. Whatever may be thought of their reasoning, their con- 
clusions and results are, at least, clearly stated, and not at all dis- 
guised. The general importance, too, of the whole is not a little 
increased by the circumstance, often stated and generally believed, 
that we owe this document, not to the committee by which it was 
reported, but to a distinguished citizen of South Carolina, holding 
one of the highest places in the gift of the people of the United 

* The resolution of the House of Representatives of South Carolina, under which 
the above committee acted, should not be forgotten : — 

" Resolved, That it is expedient to protest against the unconstitutionality and op- 
pressive operation of the system of protecting duties, and to have such protest entered 
on the journal of the Senate of the United States. Also to make a public exposition 
of our wrongs and of the remedies within our power, to be communicated to our sister 
states, with a request that they will co-operate with this state in procuring a repeal of 
the Tariff for protection ; and, if the repeal be not procured, that they will co-operate in 
euck measures as may be necessary for arresting ike evil" 



(36) 

States, in that Union, which it is the unquestionable tendency of 
this very " Exposition and Protest" to break up and overthrow. 

The doctrines clearly announced in it are, 1. That it is a most 
erroneous and dangerous proposition to maintain, that the Su- 
preme Court of the United States has constitutional authority to 
decide on the extent of the powers of a state government ; its 
decisions being final only when applied to the authorities of 
Departments of the General Government. 2. That " universal 
experience" (lest we should seem to do the distinguished author 
injustice, we cite the very words) — that " universal experience, 
" in all ages and countries, teaches, that power can only be met 
" by power, and not by reason and justice, and that all restrictions 
" on authority, unsustained by an equal antagonist power, must 
" for ever prove ivholly insufficient in practice. Such," he adds, 
" also has been the decisive proof of our own short experience." 
3. That the right of judging and finally deciding on the extent of 
their own powers, is an essential attribute of sovereignty, of 
which the states are not and cannot be divested. 4. That power 
being divided between the General Government and the State 
Governments, it is impossible to deny to the states the right of 
deciding on the infraction of their own rights, and the proper 
remedy to be applied for the correction. 5. " But the existence," 
here we quote the very words again, lest it should seem incredi- 
ble that such a position had been taken ; — " But the existence of 
*' the right of judging of their powers, clearly established from the 
" sovereignty of the states, as clearly implies a veto, or control 

ON THE ACTION OF THE GeNERAL GOVERNMENT, OU COUtCSted pointS 

of authority ; and tJiis very control is the remedy ichich Uie constitu- 
tion has provided to prevent the encroachment of the General Govern- 
ment on the reserved rights of the states.''^ 6. The practical result of 
the foregoing doctrines is then stated in the following words : — 
" That there exists a case (the Tariff) which would justify the in- 
" terposition of this state, and thereby compel the General Govern- 
" ment to abandon an unconstitutional power, or to make an 
" appeal to the amending power to confer it by express grant, 
" the committee does not in the least doubt, and they are equally 
*' clear in the existence of a necessity to justify its exercise, if the 
" General Government should continue to persist in its improper 
" assumption of powers belonging to the state ; which brings them 
" to the last point which they propose to consider — When would 
" it be proper to exercise this high power ?" 

Such was the condition of this momentous question, when, as 
the next step in the development of doctrines thus plainly tending 
to bring South Carolina into open hostility to the Union, it was 
thrust forward into the Senate of the United States by General 
Hayne, under cover of another subject, with which it had no 
proper connexion. Mr. Foot's resolution to inquire respecting the 
sales and the surveys of western lands, was the innocent cause of 
the whole conflict. It was introduced on the 29th of December, 
1829; and was not then expected by its author, or, perhaps, by 



( 37 ) 

anybody else, to excite much discussion, or lead to any very im- 
portant results. When it was introduced Mr. Webster was ab- 
sent from Washington. Two days afterwards he took his seat. 
The resolution had, indeed, called forth a few remarks, somewhat 
severe, the day after it was presented, and then had been post- 
poned to the next Monday ; but, apparently from want of interest 
in its fate, or from the pressure of more important business, it 
was not called up by the mover till January 13. From this time, 
a partial discussion began ; but it lingered rather listlessly, and, 
in fact, really rose even to skirmishing only one day, until the 
i9th, when General Hayne, in a vehement and elaborate speech, 
attacked the New-England states for what he considered their 
selfish opposition to the interests of the West ; and endeavored to 
show that a natural sympathy existed between the southern and 
western states, upon the distribution and sales of the public lands, 
which would necessarily make them a sort of natural allies. With 
this speech, of course, the war broke out. 

While it was delivering, Mr. Webster entered the Senate. He 
came from the Supreme Court of the United States; and the 
papers in his hands showed how far his thoughts were from the 
subjects and the -tone, which now at once reached him. As soon 
as General Hayne sat down, he rose to reply ; but Mr. Benton of 
Missouri, with many compliments to General Hayne, and appa- 
rently willing the Senate should have all the leisure necessary to 
consider and feel the effects of his speech, moved an adjournment. 
Mr. Webster good-naturedly consented. Of course, he had the 
floor the next day ; and in a speech, which will not be forgotten 
by the present generation, poured out stores of knowledge long 
before accumulated, in relation to the history of the public lands 
and to the legislation concerning them ; defending the policy of 
the government towards the new states ; showing the dangerous 
tendency of the doctrines respecting the Constitution, current in 
South Carolina, and sanctioned by General Hayne ; and repelling 
the general charges and reproaches cast on New-England, espe- 
cially the charge of hostility to the West, which, — if there was 
meaning in words or acts, — he proved to be distinctly applicable 
to the language and votes of the South Carolina delegation in the 
House of Representatives in 1825. The war was thus, at once, 
carried into the enemy's country. 

The next day, January 21, it being well known that Mr. Web- 
ster had urgent business, which called him again into the Supreme 
Court of the United States, one of the members from Maryland 
moved an adjournment of the debate. It would, perhaps, have 
been only what is customary and courteous, if the request had 
been granted. But General Hayne objected. " The gentleman," 
he said, "had discharged his weapon, and he (Mr. H.) wished 
for an opportunity to return the fire." To which Mr. Webster 
having replied ; — " I am ready to receive it ; let the discussion go 
on ;" — the debate was resumed. Mr. Benton then concluded some 



( 38 ) 

unimportant remarks he had begun the day before; and Mr. 
Hayne rose, and opened a speech, which occupied the Senate 
the remainder of that day, and the whole of the day following. 
It was a vigorous speech, embracing a great number of topics 
and grounds ; — calling in question the fairness of New-England, 
the consistency of Mr. Webster, and the patriotism of the State 
of Massachusetts; and ending with a bold, acute, and elabo- 
rated exposition and defence of the doctrines now, for the first 
time, formally developed in Congress, and since well known by 
the name of the Doctrines of JVuIliftcation. The first part of the 
speech was caustic and personal; the latter part of it grave and 
argumentative ; and the whole was delivered in presence of an 
audience, which any man might be proud to have collected to 
listen to him. 

Mr. Webster took notes during its delivery ; and it was appa- 
rent to the crowd, which, for two days, had thronged the senate- 
chamber, that he intended to reply. Indeed, on this point, he was 
permitted no choice. He had been assailed in a way, which call- 
ed for an answer. When, therefore, the doors of the senate- 
chamber were opened the next morning, the rush for admittance 
was unprecedented. Mr. Webster had the fioor, and rose. The 
first division of his speech is in reply to parts and details of his 
adversary's personal assault, — and is a happy, though severe 
specimen of the keenest spirit of genuine debate and retort ; — 
for Mr. Webster is one of those dangerous adversaries, who are 
never so formidable or so brilliant, as when they are most rudely 
pressed ; — for then, as in the phosphorescence of the ocean, the 
degree of the violence urged, may always be taken as the mea- 
sure of the brightness that is to follow. On the present occasion, 
his manner was cool, entirely self-possessed, and perfectly de- 
cided, and carried his irony as far as irony can go. There are 
portions of this first day's "discussion, like the passage relating to 
the charge of sleeping on the speech, he had answered ; the one 
in allusion to Banquo's ghost, which had been unhappily conjured 
up by his adversary; and the rejoinder respecting "one Nathan 
Dane of Beverly, in Massachusetts," — which M'ill not be forgotten. 
The very tones in which they were uttered, still vibrate in the ears 
of those who heard them. There are, also, other and graver 
portions of it, — like those which respect the course of legislation 
in regard to the new states ; the conduct of the North in regard 
to slavery, and the doctrine of internal improvements, — which 
are in the most powerful style of parliamentary debate. As he 
approaches the conclusion of this first great division of his 
speech, he rises to the loftiest tone of national feeling, entirely 
above the dim, misty region of sectional or party passion and 
prejudice: — 

" The eulogium pronounced on the character of the state of South Carolina, by the 
honorable gentleman, for her revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty con- 
currence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in 



(39 ) 

regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or distinguished character, South Carolina 
has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride, of her great names. 
I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurences, the Rutlcdges, the Pinck- 
neys, the Sumpters, the Marions— Americans, all — whose fame is no more to be 
hemmed in by state lines, than their talents and patriotisni were capable of being 
circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation, they 
served and honored the country, and the whole country ; and their renown is of the 
treasures of the whole country. Him, whose honored name the gentleman himself 
bears — does he esteem me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy 
for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the hght of Massachusetts, 
instead of South Carolina ? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina 
name, so bright, as to produce envy in my bosom ? No, Sir, increased gratification 
and delight, rather. I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which 
is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, 
which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, Sir, in my place here, in 
the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happens to spring up 
beyond the little Umits of my own state, or neighborhood ; when I refuse, for any such 
cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to 
sincere devotion to liberty and the country ; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of 
Heaven — if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South — and if, 
moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate the 
tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth ! 

" Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections— let me indulge in refreshing rernem- 
brance of the past— let me remind you that in early times, no states cherished 
greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Caro- 
Hna. Would to God that harmony might again return! shoulder to shoulder they 
went through the revolution — hand in hand they stood round the administration of 
Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, 
if it exist, alienation and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false 
principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm 
never scattered. 

" Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts — she needs 
none. There she is — behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history : 
the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and 
Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill — and there they will remain for ever. The 
bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled 
with the soil of every state, from New-England to Georgia ; and there they will lie 
for ever. And, Sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth 
was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and 
full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it — if party strife and 
blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it — if folly and madness — if uneasiness, under 
salutary and necessary restraint — shall succeed to separate it from that union, by 
which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that 
cradle in which its infancy was rocked : it will stretch forth its arm with whatever 
of vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it ; and it will fall at 
last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very 
spot of its origin." Pages 406, 407. 

The next day, Mr. Webster went into a grave and formal ex- 
amination of the doctrines of nullification, or the right of the state 
legislatures to interfere, whenever, in their judgment, the general 
government transcends its constitutional limits, and to arrest the 
operation of its laws. Four days had hardly elapsed, since this 
doctrine had been announced with an air oi assured success in 
the Senate ; and these four days had been tilled with active debate 
and contest. Of course, here again, there had been neither time 
nor opportunity for especial preparation. Happily, too, there 
was no need of it. The fund, on which the demand was so tri- 
umphantly made, was equal to the draft, great and unexpected as 
it was. Mr. Webster's mind is full of constitutional law and 



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legislation. On all such subjects, he needs no forecast, no prepa- 
ration, no brief; — and, on this occasion, he had none. He but 
uttered opinions and arguments, which had grown mature with 
his years and his judgment, and which were as famiUar to him 
as household words. We have, therefore, no elaborate, docu- 
mentary discussions, — no citation of books or authorities. It is 
with principles, great constitutional principles, he deals ; and it is 
in plain, direct arguments, which all can understand, that he de- 
fends them. There is nothing technical, nothing abstruse, nothing 
indirect, either in the subject or its explanation. On the contrary, 
all is straight-forward — obvious — to the purpose. For instance, 
after stating the question at issue to be, " uhose prerogative is it, 
io decide on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the laics?" 
he goes on : — 

" This leads us to inquire into the origin of tliis government, and the source of its 
power. Whose agent is it ? Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature 
of the people ? If the government of the United States be the agent of the state 
governments, theri they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of 
controlling it ; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, 
restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observable enough, that the doctrine for which 
the honorable gentleman contends, leads him to the necessity of maintaining, not 
only that this general government is the creature of the states, but that it is the 
creature of each of the states severally ; so that each may assert the power, for itself, 
of determining whether it acts within the limits of its authority. It is the servant 
of four-and-twenty masters, of different wills and different purposes, and yet bound 
to obey all. This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to 
the origin of this government and its true character. It is. Sir, the people's constitu- 
tion, the people's government, — made for the people,— made by the people,— and an- 
swerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this con- 
stitution shall be the supreme law. We must cither admit the proposition, or dispute 
their authority. The states are, unquestionably, sovereign, so far as their sove- 
reignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the state legislatures, as political 
bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people. So far as the peo- 
pie have given power to the general government, so far the grant is unquestionably 
good, and the government holds of tlie people, and not of the state governments. 
We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people. — The general government 
and the state governments derive their authority from the same source. Neither can, 
in relation to the other, be called primary, though one is definite and restricted, and 
the other general and residuary. The national government possesses those powers 
which it can be shown the people have conferred on it, and no more. All the rest 
belongs to the state governments, or to the people themselves. So far as the people 
have restrained state sovereignty, by the expression of their will, in the constitution of 
the United States, so far, it must be admitted, state sovereignty is effectually con- 
trolled. I do not contend that it is, or ought to be controlled farther. The sentiment 
to which I have referred, propounds that state sovereignty is only to be controlled by 
}tso\yn 'feeling of justice;' that is to say, it is not to be controlled at all; for one 
who is to follow his own feelings is under no legal control. — Now, however men may 
think tliis ought to be, the fact is, that the people of the United States have chosen to 
impose control on state sovereignties. There are those, doubtless, who wish they had 
been loft without restraint ; but the constitution has ordered the matter differently. 
To make war, for instance, is an exercise of sovereignty ; but the constitution declares 
that no state shall make war. To coin money is another exercise of sovereign power, 
but no state is at liberty to coin money. Again, the constitution says that no sovereign 
fftate shall be so sovereign as to make a treaty. These prohibitions, it must be 
confessed, are a control on tlio state sovereignty of South Carolina, as well as of 
the other states, which does not arise > from her own feelings of honorable justice.' 
Such an opinion, therefore, is in defiance of the plainest provisions gf the constitu- 
tion." Pages 410, 411. 



(41 ) 

Again, what can be more sure and convincing than such plain 
reasoning as this : — 

" I maintain, that, between submission to the decision of the constituted tribunals, 
and revolution, or disunion, there is no middle ground — there is no ambiguous condi- 
tion, half allegiance, and half rebellion. And, Sir, how futile, how very futile it is, 
to admit the right of state interference, and then attempt to save it from the charac- 
ter of unlawful resistance, by adding terms of qualification to the causes, and occa- 
sions, leaving all these qualifications, like the case itself, in the discretion of the state 
governments. It must be a clear ease, it is said, a deliberate case ; a palpable case ; 
a dangerous case. But then the state is still left at liberty to decide for herself, what 
is clear, what is deliberate, what is palpable, what is dangerous. Do adjectives and 
epithets avail any thing ? Sir, the human mind is so constituted, that the merits of 
both sides of a controversy appear very clear, and very palpable, to those who re- 
spectively espouse them ; and both sides usually grow clearer as the controversy 
advances. South Carolina sees unconstitutionality in the tariff; she sees oppression 
there, also ; and she sees danger. Pennsylvania, with a vision not less sharp, looks 
at the same tariff, and sees no such thing in it — she sees it all constitutional, all useful, 
all safe. The faith of South Carolina is strengthened by opposition, and she now not 
only sees, but resolves, that the tariff is palpably unconstitutional, oppressive and 
dangerous : but Pennsylvania, not to be behind her neighbors, and equally willing to 
strengthen her own faith by a confident asseveration, resolves, also, and gives to every 
warm affirmative of South Carolina, a plain, dovvnriglit, Pennsylvania negative. South 
Carolina, to show tlie strength and unity of her opinion, brings her assembly to a 
unanimity, within seven voices ; Pennsylvania, not to be outdone in this respect more 
than others, reduces her dissentient fraction to a single vote. Now, Sir, again, I ask 
the gentleman, what is to be done ? Are these states both right ? Is he bound to 
consider them both right ? If not, which is in the wrong ? — or rather, which has the 
best right to decide ? And if he, and if I, are not to know what the constitution 
means, and what it is, till those two state legislatures, and the twenty-two otliers, 
shall agree in its construction, what have we sworn to, when we have sworn to main- 
tain it ? I was forcibly struck. Sir, with one reflection, as the gentleman went on 
in his speech. He quoted Mr. Madison's resolution, to prove that a state may inter- 
fere, in a case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of a power not granted. 
The honorable member supposes the tariff law to be sucli an exercise of power ; 
and that, consequently, a case has arisen in which the state may, if it see fit, interfere 
by its own law. Now, it so happens, nevertheless, that Mr. Madison deems this same 
tariff law quite constitutional. Instead of a clear and palpable violation, it is, in his 
judgment, no violation- at all. So that, while they use his authority for a hypothetical 
case, they reject it in the very case before them. All this. Sir, shows the inherent — 
futility — I had almost used a stronger word — of conceding this power of interference 
to the states, and then attempting to secure it from abuse by imposing qualifications, 
of which the states themselves are to judge. One of two things is true ; either the 
laws of the Union are beyond the discretion, and beyond the control of the states ; or 
else we have no constitution of general government, and are thrust back again to the 
days of the confederacy." Pp. 416, 417. 

This is a striking fact about Mr. Madison ; but one still more 
striking occurred after the publication of the speech. His great 
name and authority had been constantly and confidently appealed 
to, not only in this debate, by General Hayne, but, on previous oc- 
casions, by other favorers of the South Carolina doctrines, until 
at last it began to be almost feared, that Mr. Madison sustained 
the positions of the nulHfiers. But as he had already shown that 
the tariff law was quite constitutional, so, now, with no less 
promptness and power, he came out against the whole doctrine 
of nullification, and showed that his resolutions of 1798, on which 
its friends had rested the wild fabric of their argument, as its main 
pillars, had nothing to do with it ; and thus, in conjunction with 
what had been done in the Senate, brought down the whole tem- 

F 



( 42 ) 

pie they had built with such pains and cost, upon the heads of their 
uncircumcised presumption and extravagance. His letter, in- 
deed, on this subject, is one of the most characteristic efforts of 
his great wisdom, and one of the most important results of this 
discussion, since it took from the advocates of nullification all the 
support of his authority — the magni nominis vmbra — the shade 
and shelter of his great name. 

But to return to Mr. Webster ; the general tone of the last half 
of his speech is uncommonly grave and imposing ; but there is 
one passage in which a lighter accent is assumed. It is that in 
which he runs out General Hayne's nullifying doctrine into prac- 
tice, and sets him, as a military man, to execute his own nullify- 
ing law. The argument of this passage is the more ethcacious, 
because it is concealed under so much wit and good-humor. 

" And now, Mr. President, let me run the honorable gentleman's doctrine a little 
into its practical application. Let us look at his probable modus operandi. If a thing 
can be done, an ingenious man can tell how it is to be done. Now, I wish to be in- 
formed, how this state interference is to be put in practice. We will take the existing 
case of the tariff law. South Carolina is said to have made up her opinion upon it. 
If we do not repeal it, (as we probably shall not), she will then apply to the case the 
remedy of her doctrine. She will, we must suppose, pass a law of her legislature, 
declaring the several acts of Congress, usually called the Tariff Laws, null and void, 
so far as they respect South Carolina, or tlie citizens thereof. So far, all is a paper 
transaction, and easy enough. But the collector at Charleston, is collecting the du- 
ties imposed by these tariff laws — he, therefore, must be stopped. The collector will 
seize the goods if the tariff duties are not paid. The state authorities will undertake 
their rescue ; the marshal, with his posse, will come to the collector's aid, and here 
the contest begins. The militia of the state will be called out to sustain the nullify- 
ing act. They will march, Sir, imder a very gallant leader : for I believe the honor- 
able member himself commands the militia of that part of the state. He will raise 
the Nullifying Act on his standard, and spread it out as his banner. It will have a 
preamble, bearing that the tariff laws are palpable, deliberate, and dangerous viola- 
tions of the Constitution I He will proceed, with his banner flying, to the custom- 
house in Charleston ; 

' All the while. 
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds.' 

Arrived at the custom-house, he will tell the collector that he must collect no more du- 
ties under any of the tariff laws. This, he will be somewhat puzzled to say, by the 
way, with a grave countenance, considering what hand South Carolina herself had in 
that of 1816. But, Sir, the collector would, probably, not desist, at his bidding. He 
would show him the law of Congress, the treasury instruction, and his own oath of 
office. He would say, he should perform his duty, come what might. Here would 
ensue a pause : for they say that a certain stillness precedes the tempest. The trump. 
eter woijd hold his breath awhile, and beibre all this military array should fall on the 
custom-house, collector, clerks, and all, it is very probable some of those composing it, 
would request of their gallant commander-in-chief, to be informed a little upon the 
point of law ; for they have, doubtless, a just respect for his opinions as a lawyer, as 
well as for his bravery as a soldier. They know he has read Blackstone and the Con- 
stitution, as well as Turenne and Vauban. They would ask him, therefore, something 
concerning their rights in this matter. They would inquire, whether it was not some- 
what dangerous to resist a law of the United States. What would be the nature of 
their offence, they would wish to learn, if they, by military force and array, resisted 
the execution in Carolina of a law of the United States, and it should turn out, after 
all, that the law ums constitutional ? He would answer, of course, treason. No law- 
yer could give any other answer. John Fries, he would tell them, had learned that 
some years ago. How, then, they would ask, do you propose to defend us ? We are 
not afraid of bullets, but treason has a way of taking people off, that we do not much 
relish. How do you propose to defend us ? ' Look at my floating bannsr,' he would 



(43) 

reply, ' see there the nullifying law ." Is it your opinion, gallant commander, they 
would then say, that if we should be indicted for treason, that same floating banner 
of yours would make a good plea in bar ? ' South Carolina is a sovereign state,' he 
would reply. That is true — but would the judge admit our plea ? ' These tarifFlaws,' 
he would repeat, ' are unconstitutional, palpably, deliberately, dangerously.' That 
all may be so ; but if the tribunal should not happen to be of that opinion, shall we 
swing for it ? We are ready to die for our country, but it is rather an awkward busi- 
ness, this dying without touching the ground I After all, that is a sort of hemp-taiX, 
worse than any part of the tariff. 

" Mr. President, the honorable gentleman would be in a dilemma, like that of another 
great general. He would have a knot before him which he could not untie. He must 
cut it with his sword. He must say to his followers, ' Defend yourselves with your 
bayonets ;' and this is war — civil war." pp. 421, 422. 

After this his tone becomes even more grave and solemn than 
before, until, when he approaches the conclusion, he bursts forth 
with the expression of feelings of attachment to the Union and the 
Constitution, which it seemed no longer possible for him to sup- 
press. 

" Mr. President, (he says) I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to the doc- 
trines which have been advanced and maintained. I am conscious of having detain- 
ed you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate, with no previ- 
ous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a sub- 
ject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to 
suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade 
myself to relinquish it, without expressing, once more, my deep conviction, that, since 
it respects nothing less than the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential 
importance to the public happiness. I profess. Sir, in my career, hitherto, to have 
kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of tJie whole country, and the preser- 
vation of our federal union. — It is to that union we owe our safety at home, and our 
consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for 
whatever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached only by the 
discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the 
necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its 
benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and 
sprung forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh 
proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and, although our territory has stretched out 
wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun 
its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, 
and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself. Sir, to look beyond the union, to 
see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the 
chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken 
asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to 
see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below ; nor 
could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose 
thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the union should be best pre- 
served, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken 
up and destroyed. While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects 
spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the 
veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant, that 
on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. — When my eyes shall be turned 
to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the 
broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union ; on states dissevered, dis- 
cordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in frater- 
nal blood I — Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather behold the gorgeous en- 
sign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high ad- 
vanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or 
polluted, nor a single star obscured — bearing for its motto, no such miserable inter- 
rogatory, as What is all this worth ? Nor those other words of delusion and folly. 
Liberty first, and Union afterwards — but everywhere, spread all over in characters of 
living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, 
and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true 
American heart — Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable '." 



(44) 

Mr. Havne replied in a short speech on the constitutional ques- 
tion, which he afterwards expanded in the newspapers into a long 
one ; and Mr. Webster immediately rejoined in the following brief 
remarks, which for syllogistic exactness and power can hardly 
be paralleled, and which carry with them all the force and con- 
clusiveness of which moral demonstration is susceptible. No at- 
tempt, we believe, has been made to answer them, and though it 
may be thought expedient or necessary to abuse both the remarks 
themselves and their distinguished author, we suspect no direct 
answer will be hazarded, or if any one shall venture it, we neither 
envy his boldness nor doubt its consequences. 

" A few words, Mr. President, on this constitutional argument, which the honora- 
ble gentleman has labored to reconstruct. 

" His argument consists of two propositions, and an inference. His propositions 
are : — 

" 1. That the Constitution is a compact between the States. 

" 2. That a compact between two, with authority reserved to one to interpret its 
terms, would be a surrender to that one, of all power whatever. 

" 3. Therefore, (such is his inference) the General Government does not possess 
the authority to construe its own powers. 

" Now, Sir, who does not see, without the aid of exposition or detection, the utter 
confusion of ideas, involved in this, so elaborate and systematic argument. 

" The Constitution, it is said, is a compact between States ; if so, the States, then, 
and the States only, are parties to the compact. How comes the General Government 
itself a party 7 Upon the honorable gentleman's hypothesis, the General Government 
is the result of the compact, the creature of the compact, not one of the parties to it. 
Yet the argument, as the gentleman has now stated it, makes the Government itself 
one of its own creators. It makes it a party to that compact, to which it owes its 
own existence. 

" For the purpose of erecting the Constitution on the basis of a compact, the gen- 
tleman considers the States as parties to that compact ; but as soon as his compact is 
made, then he chooses to consider the General Government, which is the offspring 
of that compact, not its offspring, but one of its parties ; and so, being a party, has 
not the power of judging on the terms of compact. Pray, Sir, in what school is such 
reasoning as this taught ? 

" If the whole of the gentleman's main proposition were conceded to him, that is to 
say— if I admit for the sake of the argument, that the Constitution is a compact be- 
tween States, the inferences, which he draws from that proposition, are warranted 
by no just reason. Because, if the Constitution be a compact between States, still, 
that Constitution, or that compact, has established a Government, with certain pow- 
ers ; and whether it be one of those powers, that it shall construe and interpret for 
itself, the terms of the compact, in doubtful cases, is a question which can only be 
decided by looking to the compact, and inquiring what provisions it contains on this 
point. Without any inconsistency with natural reason, the Government, even thus 
created, might be trusted with this power of construction. The extent of its powers, 
therefore, must still be sought for in the instrument itself. 

" If the old Confederation had contained a clause, declaring that resolutions of the 
Congress should be the supreme law of the land, any state law or constitution to the 
contrary notwithstanding, and that a committee of Congress, or any other body 
created by it, should possess judicial powers, extending to all cases arising under 
resolutions of Congress, then the power of ultimate decision would have been vested in 
Congress, under the Confederation, although that Confederation was a compact be- 
tween States ; and, for this plain reason : that it would have been competent to the 
States, who alone were parties to the compact, to agree, who should decide, in cases 
of dispute arising on the construction of the compact. 

" For the same reason. Sir, if I were now to concede to the gentleman his principal 
proposition, viz. that the Constitution is a compact between States, the question would 
still be, what provision is made, in this compact, to settle points of disputed construc- 
tion, or contested power, that shall come into controversy ? and this question would 
still be answered, and conclusively answered, by the Constitution itself. While the 
gentleman is contending against construction, he himself is setting up the most loose 



(45) 

and dangerous construction. The Constitution declares, that the laws of Congress 
shall be the supreme law of the land. No construction is necessary here. It declares, 
also, with equal plainness and precision, that the Judicial power of the United States 
shall extend to every case arising under the laws of Congress. This needs no con- 
struction. Here is a law, then, which is declared to be supreme ; and here is a power 
established, which is to interpret that law. Now, Sir, how has the gentleman met 
this ? Suppose the CoJistitution to be a compact, yet here are its terms, and how 
does the gentleman get rid of them ? He cannot argue the seal o^ the bond, nor the 
words out of the instrument. Here they are — what answer does he give to them ? 
None in the world. Sir, except that the effect of this would be to place the States in 
a condition of inferiority ; and because it results, from the very nature of things, there 
being no superior, that the parties must be their own judges ! Thus closely and co- 
gently does the honorable gentleman reason on the words of the Constitution. The 
gentleman says, if there be such a power of final decision in the General Government, 
he asks for the grant of that power. Well, Sir, I show him the grant — I turn him to 
the very words — I show him that the laws of Congress are made supreme ; and that 
the Judicial power extends, by express words, to the interpretation of these laws. In- 
stead of answering this, he retreats into the general reflection, that it must result /ro7/i 
the nature of things, that the States, being parties, must judge for themselves. 

" I have admitted, that, if the Constitution were to be considered as the creature 
of the State Governments, it might be modified, interpreted, or construed, accordinf 
to their pleasure. But, even in that case, it would be necessary that they should 
agree. One, alone, could not interpret it conclusively ; one, alone, could not construe 
it ; one, alone, could not modify it. Yet the gentleman's doctrine is, that Carolina, 
alone, may construe and interpret that compact which equally binds all, and gives 
equal rights to all. 

" So then. Sir, even supposing the Constitution to be a compact between the States, 
the gentleman's doctrine, nevertheless, is not maintainable ; because, first, the Gen- 
eral Government is not a party to that compact, but a Government established by it, 
and vested by it with the powers of trying and deciding doubtful questions; and, sec- 
ondly, because, if the Constitution be regarded as a compact, not one State only, but 
all the States, are parties to that compact, and one can have no right to fix upon it her 
own peculiar construction. 

" So much. Sir, for the argument, even if the premises of the gentleman were 
granted, or could be proved. But, Sir, the gentleman has failed to maintain his lead- 
ing proposition. He has not shown, it cannot be shown, that the Constitution is a 
compact between State Governments. The Constitution itself, in its very front, re- 
futes that idea : it declares that it is ordained and established fcy the People of the Uni- 
ted States. So far from saying that it is established by the Governments of the seve- 
ral States, it does not even say that it is established by the People of the several 
States ; but it pronounces that it is established by the People of the United States, in 
the aggregate. The gentleman says, it must mean no more than the People of the 
several States. Doubtless, the People of the several States, taken collectively, consti- 
tute the People of the United States ; but it is in this, their collective capacity, it is as all 
the people of the United States, that they establish the Constitution. So they declare ; 
and words cannot be plainer than the words used. 

" When the gentleman says the Constitution is a compact between the States, he 
uses language exactly applicable to the old confederation. He speaks as if he were 
in Congress before 1789. He describes fully that old state of things then existing. 
The confederation was, in strictness, a compact; the States, as States, were parties to 
it. We had no other General Government. But that was found insufficient, and 
inadequate to the public exigencies. The people were not satisfied with it, and un- 
dertook to establish a better. They undertook to form a General Government, which 
should stand on a new basis — and a confederacy, not a league, not a compact between 
states, but a constitution ; a popular government, founded in popular election, directly 
responsible to the people themselves, and divided into branches, with prescribed 
limits of power, and prescribed duties, They ordained such a government ; they 
gave it the name of a Constitution, and therein they established a distribution of 
powers between this, their General Government, and their several State Governments. 
When they shall become dissatisfied with this distribution, they can alter it. Their 
own power over their own instrument remains. But until they shall alter it, it must 
stand as their will, and is equally binding on the General Government and on the 
States. 

" The gentleman, Sir, finds analogy, where I see none. He likens it to the case 



(46) 

of a treaty, in which, there being no common superior, each party must interpret for 
itself under its own obligation of good faith. But this is not a treaty, but a constitu- 
tion of government, with powers to execute itself, and fulfil its duties. 

" I admit, Sir, that this Government is a Government of checks and balances ; that 
is the House of Representatives is a check on the Senate, and the Senate is a check 
on the House, and the President a check on both. But I cannot comprehend him, 
or, if I do, I totally differ from him, when he applies the notion of checks and bal- 
ances to the interference of different Governments. He argues, that if we transgress, 
each State, as a State, has a right to check us. Does he admit the converse of the 
proposition, that we have a right to check the States? The gentleman's doctrines 
would give us a strange jumble of authorities and powers, instead of Governments of 
separate and defined powers. It is the part of wisdom, I think, to avoid this; and to 
keep the General Government and tiie State Governments, each in its proper sphere, 
avoiding, as carefully as possible, every kind of interference. 

" Finally, Sir, the honorable gentleman says, that the States will only interfere, by 
their power, to preserve the Constitution. They will not destroy it, they will not im- 
pair it they will only save, they will only preserve, they will only strengthen it ! 

Ah I Sir this is but the old story. All regulated Governments, all free Governments, 
have been broken up by similar disinterested and well-disposed interference ! It is 
the common pretence. But I take leave of the subject." 

With these remarks the discussion ended, as between Mr. 
Webster and General Hayne. It was afterwards continued, how- 
ever, for several weeks, and a majority, or nearly a majority, 
of the whole Senate took part in it ; but whenever it is now recol- 
lected or referred to, the contest between the two principal 
speakers, from the 19th to the 23d of January, is, we believe, 
generally intended. 

The results of this memorable debate are already matter of 
history. The vast audience that had contended for admission to 
the senate-chamber, till entrance became dangerous, were the first 
to feel and make known its effect ; for, with his peculiar power 
of explaining abtruse and technical subjects, so that all can com- 
prehend them, Mr. Webster there expounded a great doctrine of 
the constitution, which had been powerfully assailed, so that all 
might feel the foundations on which it rests, to have been consoli- 
dated rather than disturbed by the attempt to shake them. Their 
verdict, therefore, was given at the time, and heard throughout 
the country. But since that day, when the crowd came out of 
the senate-chamber rejoicing in the victory which had been 
achieved for the constitution, nearly twenty editions of the same 
argument have been called for in different parts of the country, 
and thus scattered abroad above an hundred thousand copies of 
it, besides the countless multitudes that have been sent forth by the 
newspapers, until, almost without a metaphor, it may be said to 
have been carried to every fire-side in the land. The very ques- 
tion, therefore, which was first submitted to an audience in the 
capitol, — comprising, indeed, a remarkable representation of the 
talents and authority of the country, but still comparatively small, 
— has since been submitted by the press to the judgment of the 
nation, more fully, probably, than any thing of the kind was ever 
submitted before ; and the same remarkable plainness, the same 
power of elucidating great legal and constitutional doctrines till 
they become as intelligible and simple as the occupations of daily 



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life, has enlarged the jury of the senate-chamber till it has become 
the jury of the whole people, and the same verdict has foIlo\yed. 
What, therefore, Chancellor Kent said in relation to it, is as true 
as it is beautiful ; — " Peace has its victories as well as war ;" — 
and the triumph which Mr. Webster thus secured for a great 
constitutional principle, he may now well regard as the chief 
honor of his life. 

Indeed, a man such as he is, when he looks back upon his past 
life, and forward to the future, must needs feel, that his fate and 
his fortune, his fame and his ambition, are connected throughout 
with the fate and the fortunes of the constitution of his country. 
He is the child of our free institutions. None other could have 
produced or reared him ; — none other can now sustain or advance 
him. From the days when amidst the fastnesses of nature, his 
young feet with difficulty sought the rude school-house, where 
his earliest aspirations were nurtured, up to the moment when he 
came forth in triumph from the senate-chamber, conscious that 
he had overthrown the doctrines of nullification, and contended 
successfully for the union of the states, he must have felt, that his 
extraordinary powers have constantly depended for their devel- 
opment and their exercise on the peculiar institutions of our free 
governments. It is plain, indeed, that he has thriven, heretofore, 
by their progress and success ; and it is, we think, equally plain, 
that in time to come, his hopes and his fortunes can be advanced 
only by their continued stability and further progress. We think, 
too, that Mr. Webster feels this. On all the great principles of 
the constitution, and all the leading interests of the country, his 
opinions are known ; his ground is taken ; his lot is cast. Who- 
ever may attack the Union, or any of the fundamental doctrines 
of our land, he must defend them. Prima fortuna saluiis monstrat 
iter. The path he has chosen, is the path he must follow. And 
we rejoice at it. We rejoice, that such a necessity is imposed on 
such a mind. We rejoice, that, even such as he cannot stand, 
unless they sustain the institutions that formed them ; and that, 
what is in itself so poetically just and so morally beautiful, is en- 
forced by a providential wisdom, which neither genius nor ambi- 
tion can resist or control. We rejoice, too, when, on the other 
hand, a man so gifted, faithfully and proudly devotes to the insti- 
tutions of his country the powers and influence they have unfolded 
and fostered in him, that, in his turn, he is again rewarded with 
confidence and honors, which, as they can come neither from 
faction nor passion, so neither party discipline nor political vio- 
lence can diminish or impair them. And, finally, and above all, 
we rejoice for the great body of the people, that the decided and 
unhesitating support they have so freely given to the distinguished 
Senator, with whose name " this land now rings from side to 
side," because he has triumphantly defended the union of the 
states and the principles of the constitution; — we rejoice, we say, 
for the people, because, such a support given by them for such a 



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cause, not only strengthens and cements the very foundations of 
whatever is most valuable in our government ; but at the same 
time, warns and encourages all who would hereafter seek similar 
honors and favors, to consult for the course they shall follow, 
neither the indications of party nor the impulses of passion, but to 
address themselves plainly, fearlessly, calmly, directly to the in- 
telligence and honesty of Uie whole naiim, " and ask no omen but 
their country's cause." 



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